THE LONG LIST OF "GUN-CONTROL" MYTHS rev. 1/5/98
[talk.politics.guns' Official Pro-Gun FAQ (fully indexed, w/glossary)
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3.7 "Gun buy-backs are an effective way to get guns off the street."
See LaPierre,_Guns, Crime and Freedom,_where he devotes an entire
chapter (Chapter 8) to this.
In summary: Gun buy-backs, or "guns-for-cash" programs, in which
police departments or businesses pay a small amount of cash or
merchandise for any gun which is turned in for destruction, have
gotten an enthusiastic response in many cities, and have succeeded
in getting large numbers of guns "off the street". But what kind
of guns? For the most part, these programs act as an economic
incentive to dump old, obsolete, unsaleable (and in some cases
even non-functional) guns which are less valuable than the reward
being offered. Many of these programs are set up to accept guns
with "no questions asked" and full anonymity for the person who
turns in a gun, and can be used by criminals to dispose of illegal
firearms (like unregistered sawed-off shotguns) and/or guns which
have been used in crimes (thus destroying potential evidence).
More valuable modern or antique firearms have plenty of buyers,
and sometimes, collectors (or even criminals looking for a bargain),
have attempted to buy the more valuable weapons from people waiting
in line to sell their guns at a buy-back, offering to pay a higher
price than the buy-back is offering. Some people may have inherited
a gun, or have an old war relic in their attic which they don't know
the value of, and they may have no desire to keep the gun, so when
the buy-back is announced, it sounds like a good deal. Thieves may
steal a gun and take it to the buy-back for some quick "no questions
asked" cash. And even the people responsible for destroying the
collected guns have on occasion been known to pocket some of the
better ones, either for their own use, or for later sale. Gun buy-
backs have little chance of disarming serious criminals, since_they_
know how valuable their weapons are, both as tools of their trade,
and as a medium of exchange (see 3.5).
Recently, another form of "buy back" has begun to be used as a
substitute for house-to-house gun confiscation in the United Kingdom
and Australia. While called a "buy back," the compulsory nature
of these programmes shows that they are really nothing more than an
initially less obtrusive means of confiscation, to be followed by
harsher measures once the majority of gun owners have been disarmed
(see Appendix III).
3.8 "Permitting people to carry concealed weapons will lead
to increased violent crime, and people killing each other at
the slightest provocation."
See LaPierre,_Guns, Crime and Freedom,_where he devotes an entire
chapter (Chapter 4) to this.
also
_Commonplace Book_by Thomas Jefferson (G. Chinard ed., 1926), p.314
Kleck,_Point Blank,_pp.411-414.
_Uniform Crime Reports,_FBI (1992)
and
Florida Statutes, title 46, sec. 790.06, pp.590-597 (amended 1992)
In summary: Persons who go to the effort and expense of obtaining
a permit to carry a concealed weapon (which, to use Florida's 1987
law as an example, requires 6 months or longer residency, being
over 21 years of age, able bodied, not a drug abuser or alcoholic,
completion of a firearms safety course, no felonies or violent
misdemeanors or record of being committed for mental illness, sworn
application on file listing name, address, place and date of birth,
race, and occupation, and including a statement that the applicant
meets the above criteria, a $125 application fee [renewable after
three years for $100], a full set of fingerprints, and a color photo),
and who submit to a full background check to verify the application
and check fingerprints, are not the sorts of people who abuse
firearms. The permit process acts quite effectively to select for
law-abiding citizens rather than trigger-happy criminals, and the
records of those states which have liberalized their concealed carry
laws show this. Of the 204,108 licenses issued in the Florida law's
first 6 1/2 years of operation, seventeen (17, or .008%) were
revoked for unlawful conduct while the firearm was present, and many
of these violations were either technical (such as carrying into a
restricted area, like an airport or bar) or non-gun related (such
as revoking a permit due to a drunken driving arrest). In Oregon,
over 60,000 concealed carry permits have been issued, and none has
been revoked.
In light of these successes, many other states, Tennessee, Arizona,
Wyoming, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Texas,
Oklahoma, and most recently, Kentucky and South Carolina, have joined
the ranks of states protecting the individual right to self defense
through reformed concealed carry laws. One state, Vermont, even allows
concealed carry without a permit, and has little crime. (The complete
list of 31 states having non-discretionary, or so-called "shall issue"
concealed carry laws: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CT, FL, GA, ID, IN, KY, LA, ME,
MS, MT, NV, NH, NC, ND, OK, OR, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT*, VA, WA,
WV, WY. *VT requires no permit.) The impact of such laws on fighting
crime is debatable at a purely statistical level, but states which issue
concealed carry permits to their law-abiding population show less
violent crime in general than those which do not, and rates of some
crimes (such as homicide and robbery) which are 50% lower than states
in which concealed carry is not permitted. These states, it could be
argued, may have had less crime than restrictive states to begin with,
but the dire predictions by "gun control" advocates that violent crime
would increase in these states following liberalization of concealed
carry have not proven to be valid (see also 3.8.a).
At an individual level, many carry permit holders have already
saved their own lives and the lives of others in the face of criminal
violence. Armed citizens, permit or not, kill almost as many criminals
each year as do law enforcement officers (some 348 out of 763, or 46%
of justifiable homicides in 1992), and armed citizens are less likely
to have "bad shoots" than the police, since, unlike the police, they
aren't usually arriving late at the scene and_then_having to figure
out who the bad guys are. Armed citizens may in fact kill far more
criminals in justifiable shootings than the police, since statistics
which are available reflect only the initial determinations about a
shooting incident, and not the verdict in the case after it has
actually been tried. Police are more often given the benefit of the
doubt in shooting incidents than are private citizens. But, as is
pointed out elsewhere (see 1.1), the true measure of the ability of
firearms to fight crime isn't found in the body count, but in
criminals wounded, deterred from violence by fear that a potential
victim may be armed, or driven away without even firing a shot.
The fact that laws against carrying weapons were ineffective
against crime was no secret to Thomas Jefferson, who hand-copied
this quotation from the 18th century Italian criminologist Cesare
Beccaria's 1764 book_On Crimes and Punishments_into his own notebook
on law and government, a quote which sums up well the arguments of
those who defend the right to keep and bear arms:
"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand
real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience;
that would take fire from men because it burns, and water
because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils
except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of
arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who
are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it
be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the
most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code,
will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can
be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly
obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty --so dear to men,
so dear to the enlightened legislator-- and subject innocent
persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to
suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and
better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage
than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked
with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be
designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes,
produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts,
and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences
and advantages of a universal decree."
3.8.a "Yeah, but what about the University of Maryland study
that showed that murders increased after concealed-carry permits
were issued in Florida?
McDowall, David; Wiersema, Brian; and Loftin, Colin; "Easing
Concealed Firearms Laws: Effects on Homicide in Three States,"
J. of Criminal Law and Criminology v.86, n.1, pp.195-204 (1995)
Polsby, Daniel; "Firearms Costs, Firearms Benefits, and the
Limits of Knowledge," J. of Criminal Law and Criminology v.86,
n.1, pp.207-220 (1995)
In summary: A recently published study by the University of
Maryland's Violence Research Group, claimed that average monthly
homicides by gun increased in four of five urban areas studied,
after the adoption of liberalized concealed carry reform laws.
This statistical "factoid" was first offered up March 13, 1995
by the Associated "Black Rhino" Press, and was widely reported
(and misreported) elsewhere. However, the researchers do not
attempt to argue that_any_of these gun-related homicides were
committed by concealed carry permit holders, nor do they consider
the relative proportion of concealed carry permit holders in each
of the studied localities, which if one were to assume that less
restrictive concealed carry is associated with increased homicide,
would be a particularly important factor to consider. Information
that is available from other sources, such as the state government
in Florida, suggests that criminality by concealed carry permit
holders is virtually unknown. (See 3.8, and Appendix II.) If
increased carry by citizens with CCW permits is responsible for
any increased homicide, the researchers do not establish a plausible
explanation for the change in rate, if such a change actually exists.
Also the researchers selected the cities they did on the basis of
their status as "large urban areas," rather than looking at the
homicide rates for each state as a whole, when the concealed-carry
laws were enacted statewide.
Three of the five localities studied were in Florida (where
a statewide CCW reform law was enacted in 1987, and where "gun
control" advocates predicted increased violent crime would make
it into the "Gunshine State"). Both in Jacksonville, where the study
claims that the monthly average number of gun-related homicides
increased by 74 percent, and in Tampa, where the study claims the
monthly average number of gun-related homicides jumped 22 percent,
the study notes that the rates of homicide_without_firearms also
increased. In Miami, a city of intermediate size relative to
Tampa and Jacksonville, the study claims gun-related homicides
per month increased 3 percent, but this analysis is based upon a
different time span than that for Tampa and Jacksonville. The
researchers claim that using a different baseline was necessary
"because of an unusually sharp increase in homicide rates [in Miami]
in May 1980 after an influx of Cuban refugees." Results of time
series analyses such as this, and the similar study of the effects
of Washington D.C.'s gun registration law by the same researchers
(see 3.0.b., and Appendix IV), are highly dependent upon the time
spans chosen for study. In those Florida cities for which the
most dramatic results were obtained, the baseline used stretched
all the way back to 1973, but for Miami, the baseline began in 1983.
Presumably, given the higher initial Miami homicide rates that the
researchers attribute to the Cuban refugees, starting off with
same baseline year for Miami as for the other Florida cities would
have produced a resulting increase_less_than the 3 percent observed.
Complicating any analysis of Florida's crime rates is the fact that
almost immediately following the passage of Florida's 1987 CCW reforms,
the state changed the manner in which it collects crime statistics,
so comparisons before and after the implementation of the law_can_be
invalid on that basis. However, the number of homicides ought not
to be affected by that, since to have a homicide, you need to have
a body. Statistical changes ought not to affect the ability to count
bodies, which is essentially what the Maryland study does (albeit
very crudely, and without distinguishing between justifiable homicides
and murders). The researchers cite FBI's Uniform Crime Reports data
in asserting that justifiable homicides are uncommon, but the FBI
numbers actually undercount the number of justifiable homicides by
civilians, since FBI statistics rely upon the initial determination
made about an incident (see 3.8). A statewide analysis of the Florida
data (see Appendix II.), reveals that the U. Maryland researchers
missed the overall downward trend in murder/manslaughter rates since
the Florida concealed-carry law was enacted.
The question of the direction of causality's arrow is critically
important to consider. Does increased homicide lead to more people
obtaining permits to carry, or does increasing the availability of
permits to carry increase the homicide rate? The Maryland study's
researchers seem to want to argue the latter, but they have thus far
offered no evidence that CCW permit holders are doing the killing!
The sampling of these particular localities, since nonrandom, can
also be used to introduce bias into such a study, and sociological
differences between localities also need to be controlled for.
The wide disparities in the with-gun homicide rates given in
the study seem very unusual at first glance, and this is the result
of the fact that the study is calculating its percent increases in
absolute terms (4 going up to 7) rather than per 100,000 population,
as is necessary for any realistic assessment. The attempt by the
researchers to control for population changes by lumping together
data from all five studied cities is a less than adequate solution
if they intend to consider the homicide rates seperately for each
city elsewhere in their report (and in their quotes to the press).
The researchers themselves admit that "[t]he population of all five
areas grew over the study period, especially in the Florida cities.
Homicide counts thus may have changed after the laws in part because
of increases in the populations at risk."
The two other localities examined were Jackson, Mississippi,
where the average monthly gun-related homicide rate increased by 43
percent; and Portland, Oregon, where the average monthly gun-related
homicide rate_fell_by 12 percent. The Portland data, the researchers
note, did not provide enough homicides, so data from two adjoining
counties were included as well. (Again, one presumes that if this
had not been done, the Portland rate would have been seen to decline
even more than the 12 percent reported.) Calculating average numbers
of homicides per month serves to make the numbers smaller, and if
there are few homicides in a locality to begin with, as was apparently
the case in Portland, the degree of "noise" in the data can produce
some "startling" percentage changes, if considered in absolute terms.
(If one average has 6 homicides, and the next, 3, that's a "50% DROP!")
It's also widely known in criminology that more violent crime occurs
in summer months than in winter months, so averaging over the year,
as a "moving average" technique does, can also serve to produce
smaller numbers, more suceptible to "startling" percentage changes.
This study design (and the similar study of Washington D.C.'s gun
registration law) seems geared towards maximizing "noise," rather
than discerning a longer-term trend.
The researchers' conclusion is tentative: "While advocates of
these relaxed [carry] laws argue that they will prevent crime, and
suggest that they have reduced homicides in areas that adopted them,
we strongly suggest caution. When states weaken limits on concealed
weapons, they may be giving up a simple and effective method of
preventing firearm deaths." This quotation also points up another
aspect of bias in the study. What exactly is significant about_gun_
related homicides, versus total homicides? Does the fact that
a homicide is committed with a firearm make the slain any_more
dead than if the homicide was committed with a knife, or with hands
and feet? The researchers claim that homicides by other means
remained mostly steady, yet in the two Florida cities showing the
greatest increases, both gun and non-gun related homicides went up.
If the increased presence of firearms in the hands of the law-abiding
serves to deter murders with other weapons, this effect would be
discounted when only homicides involving firearms are considered.
In the case of Florida, since the murder rates have_decreased_when
considered on a statewide basis, these supposed increases in urban
areas must have been offset by drastic drops elsewhere.
The researchers do not consider Florida data later than 1991,
since they say other laws, such as the 1991 passage of waiting
periods and background checks on new gun purchases in Florida, would
make it difficult to disentangle the results of the new laws from
the concealed carry law. Yet presuming that the declines in
murder rates since 1991 are attributable to background checks and
waiting periods runs counter to the assumption that gun availability
is a crucial factor driving murder rates. Neither background checks
nor waiting periods would have any appreciable effect on the existing
supply of guns available, while concealed carry opponents claim that
CCW laws make guns more available in the heat of an argument. To
compare the potential effects of these laws on the availability of
guns is to compare apples and oranges. Concealed carry can be the
ultimate test of the "gun availability" hypothesis. So far, the
awful consequences that are habitually predicted by those opposed to
concealed carry reform laws haven't been shown to occur. If anything,
the available data is consistent with the view that concealed carry
has a deterrent effect, or at the least has no direct negative effect.
The researchers_attempt to_speculate that increased availability
of legal concealed weapons is leading to an "arms race" between
criminals and their potential victims, and more criminals are
using firearms than previously. They write "[g]reater tolerance
for legal carrying may increase levels of illegal carrying as well.
For example, criminals have more reason to carry firearms --and to
use them-- when their victims might be armed." As Daniel Polsby
points out in the same journal, this "arms race" hypothesis would
presumably also operate when greater numbers of armed police officers
are introduced into a locality. But the legitimacy of availability
of concealed carry permits to the law abiding is not predicated on
the frequency of misbehavior of criminals-- except in the minds
of "gun control" advocates who wish to prohibit any item that could
potentially be misused by criminals (chemical defense sprays and
stun guns included), regardless of its effectiveness in protecting
the weak from the predations of the strong. (See 1.1.a) Theirs
is a policy which demands that victims "lie back and enjoy it,"
rather than_fight_back, and reduce their risk of injury or death.
3.8.b - "The Lott/Mustard study is just gun industry propaganda!
How can anybody believe that concealed carry reduces violent crime?"
See Lott, John R., and Mustard, David B., "Crime, Deterrence,
and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," J. of Legal Studies,
vol.26, n.1, pp.1-68 (Jan. 1997)
In summary: In the most comprehensive study yet conducted on the
effects of the recent concealed carry reform laws in the U.S., two
economists at the University of Chicago examined county level and
statewide data for the entire United States from 1977 to 1992,
obtained from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program. Their
conclusions that concealed carry reform laws have had a measurable
effect in reducing violent crime rates, have prompted a barrage of
criticism in the press by anti-gun activists, but the response of
their academic colleagues has been much more cautious.
Lott and Mustard found that county-level violent crime rates
declined by 4.90% in states where concealed-carry laws went into
effect, and that for specific categories of violent crime, the
benefits associated with concealed-carry laws were even greater.
County-level murder rates declined 7.65% in concealed-carry states,
rapes declined 5.27%, and aggravated assaults declined by 7.01%.
Based upon the numbers of violent crimes reported in 1992 in
counties without concealed-carry reform laws, Lott and Mustard
conclude that "at least 1,414 murders and over 4,177 rapes would
have been avoided" in 1992 if states which lacked these laws
instead had them in effect. The rate of robbery, while it was
observed to decline in those counties where statewide concealed-
carry laws went into effect, did not register such a dramatic
change, dropping only 2.21%. Considering this decline in absolute
terms, as above, concealed-carry reform would have meant 11,898
fewer robberies in 1992. Aggravated assaults in 1992 would have
declined by 60,363 incidents, according to the same analysis.
Property crimes, however, increased 2.69% in counties where
statewide concealed-carry went into effect, with the largest jump
occurring in auto theft, which increased 7.14%. Lott and Mustard
argue that this finding supports "the notion that criminals respond
to incentives" and "criminals respond substantially to the threat
of being shot by instead substituting into less risky crimes" where
contact with a potentially armed victim is less likely. Even with
this increase in property crime, Lott and Mustard estimate a net
economic gain from allowing concealed handguns of over $5.74 billion
in 1992 dollars, using methods similar to those of a 1996 National
Institute of Justice study which attempted to estimate economic
losses due to crime.
The changes in crime rates associated with concealed-carry reform
laws were not evenly distributed geographically or demographically,
according to the authors. Counties with larger populations showed
larger effects, both greater declines in violent crime, and greater
increases in property crime. When county-level data are aggregated,
such as when considering state-level crime rates, low-crime rural
counties and high-crime urban areas are lumped together, tending to
average out their differences. Indeed, state-level analysis of the
data set used by Lott and Mustard reflects_decreases_in property
crime associated with concealed-carry laws across the country instead
of increases! In the state-level analysis, violent crime rates
declined 10.11% (rather than 4.9% as seen the county-level analysis),
murder rates declined 8.62%, rape rates declined 6.07%, aggravated
assault declined 10.9%, and robbery declined 14.21%. Property crime
rates, which are observed to increase in the county-level analysis
show a decline of 4.19% when analysis is done with state-level data
aggregation. Auto theft, rather than showing an increase, declines
very slightly in the state-level analysis, down 0.88%.
Counties with larger populations are more likely to have had
restrictive carry laws than low population counties, and so it is
in these counties where the presumed benefits of liberalizing
concealed-carry will be seen most strongly. "The implication for
existing studies is that simply using state level data rather than
county data will bias the results against finding any impact from
passing right-to-carry provisions," the authors note. In order to
better understand the changes brought by the concealed-carry reform
laws, differences between the counties in arrest and conviction rates
for various crimes, sentence lengths, and rates of issuance of carry
permits before and after the laws also need to be controlled for,
though such complete data were only available for a small subset of
counties in the Lott/Mustard study. Data for counties in Arizona,
Oregon and Pennsylvania showed that counties with higher arrest rates
had lower crime rates, and the Pennsylvania data show a strong
correlation between issuance of concealed handgun permits and
decreased violent crime. The Oregon data did show decreases in
violent crime correlated with concealed carry permits, but the
effects were not nearly so dramatic. The Arizona law had changed
too recently for any such correlation to be noticed. The authors
suggest that the differences observed between Oregon and Pennsylvania
may be attributable to Oregon having passed a 15-day "waiting period"
law at the same time.
Despite the fact that comparatively few women have acquired carry
permits, the county-level data for states issuing CCW permits show
correlations with reductions in rape rates which are comparable to
the reductions observed in other categories of violent crime. This
suggests, Lott and Mustard argue, "that rapists are particularly
susceptible to this form of deterrence," and that "providing a woman
with a gun has a much bigger effect on her ability to defend herself"
than does providing a gun to a man. The benefits to other women
("positive externalities," in the terms used by economists), from a
woman carrying a handgun are apparently "large relative to the gain
produced by an additional man carrying a concealed handgun."
Lott and Mustard also considered the question of whether increased
concealed carry might result in a greater number of gun accidents.
Adopting concealed carry was not found to have a statistically
significant effect on gun accidents.
At the time of the release of the Lott/Mustard study, a smear
originating with Josh Sugarmann's Washington-based anti-gun group,
the Violence Policy Center, was picked up uncritically by several
news organizations, including the Associated Press. In a press
release/editorial letter signed by VPC's Kristen Rand, the claim
was made that Dr. Lott's research had been "in essence, funded by
the firearms industry." The tortured logic used to reach this
conclusion was this: since Dr. Lott is the John M. Olin Visiting
Law and Economics Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School,
and because the endowment for that position was provided by the
John M. Olin Foundation, established by the estate of the late
John M. Olin (who died in 1982), and who while he was alive was
part of the family that owns Olin Corporation, one of whose
subsidiary businesses makes Winchester ammunition, therefore...
_argumentum ad hominem._ While Dr. Lott is the current occupant
of that faculty position, he was not at the University of Chicago
when it was created, nor is he the first professor to be the Olin
fellow, nor does the Olin Foundation have any control over who
gets appointed to the position (which is decided by a faculty
committee), nor does the Olin Foundation (or anybody else) have
input into the research topics chosen. Neither is such a fellowship
unique to the University of Chicago, since the Olin Foundation
has endowed chairs at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, the
University of Virginia, and others. Dr. Lott's salary is paid by
the University of Chicago Law School. After further investigation,
the Associated Press printed a retraction of the smear, and other
news organizations soon followed suit (so to speak).
The data set used in the study, which Lott and Mustard have
freely released, is currently being analyzed by other researchers,
and academic criticism will hopefully soon take the place of
political mudslinging.
Section IV - Deterrence and resistance to tyranny
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
-=(Thomas Jefferson, motto found among his papers)=-
"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily
win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory
will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment
when you have to fight with all the odds against you and only
a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case.
You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because
it is better to perish than live as slaves."
-=(Winston Churchill,_The Gathering Storm,_1948)=-
4.0 "Ordinary people can't fight a modern army with just pistols,
rifles and shotguns! What chance does a_militia_have against tanks,
planes, helicopters, and nuclear weapons?"
See_War in the Shadows: Guerillas Past and Present,_2nd. ed.
by Robert Asprey, Morrow, ISBN 0-688-12815-7, (1994) for a
broad historical overview of guerilla warfare.
_Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture In Post-Vietnam America,_
by James William Gibson, ISBN 0-8090-9666-8, Hill and Wang, (1994)
attempts to explain the sociological origins of some aspects of
America's gun culture and its development in recent decades.
An interesting read, even if one doesn't agree with the author's
assumptions.
also
_The Right to Bear Arms: The Rise of America's New Militias,_
by Jonathan Karl, Harper Paperbacks, ISBN 0-06-101015-4, (1995)
[A generally well-researched introduction to the paramilitary
militia movement in the United States. Karl does, however, repeat
the media fallacy of the "hollowpoint 'cop-killer' bullet," p. 127]
for a more sympathetic (and historical) view of neo-militias see:
_Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution and Citizen Militias,_
Larry Pratt, ed., Legacy Communications, ISBN 1-880692-18-X, (1995)
[Larry Pratt is executive director of Gun Owners of America, an
organization defending the political dimensions of gun ownership.
Pratt was also in 1995-1996 a campaign co-chairman for Republican
presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. GOA can be reached at 8001
Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151, at (703) 321-8585,
and on the Web at http://www.gunowners.org/ ]
for an opposing view, focusing on the violent racist fringe, see:
_Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat,_by Morris Dees with
James Corcoran, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-017403-X, (1996)
[Morris Dees is the executive director of the Southern Poverty
Law Center, a group which collects information on and litigates
against racist organizations. The working title of Dees' book
was_Rebellion in the Heartland: The Story of America's Militia
Network,_ but the more ominous and sensationalistic title better
reflects Dees' own views of the paramilitary militia movement.]
Dunlap, Jr. (USAF), Col. Chales J., "Revolt of the Masses: Armed
Civilians and the Insurrectionary Theory of the Second Amendment,"
Tennessee Law Review v.62 pp.643-677 [Col. Dunlap presents a sober
critical analysis of the argument that irregular forces can defeat
modern professional armed forces. This article appeared as part of
a symposium issue on the Second Amendment.]
also
_1984: Spring - A Choice of Futures,_by Arthur C. Clarke,
ISBN 0-345-31357-7, (1984) pp. 3-13
_Paul Revere's Ride and the Battle of Lexington and Concord,_
by David H. Fischer, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508-847-6
(1994)
_Afghanistan: the Soviet War,_by Edward Girardet, St. Martin's Press,
ISBN 0-312-00923-2, (1985)
_Lethal Laws,_published by JPFO (see above)
_The Bravest Battle,_by Dan Kurzman, G.P. Putnam's Sons,
ISBN 0-399-11692-3, (1976)
_Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter,_by Simha Rotem (Kazik),
Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-05797-0, (1994)
_The Gulag Archipelago,_by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn,
HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-092104 (1991)
_Schindler's List,_by Thomas Keneally, Touchstone Books,
ISBN 0-671-88031-4, (1993) p. 374
_Victory,_by Peter Schwizer, Atlantic Monthly Press,
ISBN 0-87713-567-1 (1994), which is now available in
paperback as ISBN 0-87113-633-3
_War in Afghanistan,_by Mark Urban, St. Martin's Press,
ISBN 0-312-01205-5 (1988)
In summary: While the full scope of tactics involved in modern
urban and guerrilla warfare would require a FAQ by itself, the common
assertion by "gun control" supporters that resistance against a
tyrannical government by the use of privately owned small arms is
impossible today (given the destructive power of modern military
weapons) reflects a degree of certitude which can hardly be called
unanimous among those familiar with the history of low-intensity
conflicts around the world. Certainly it is possible to_kill_greater
numbers of people faster today than ever before in human history,
but_enslaving_a people and_subjecting_them to tyrannical rule is
becoming increasingly_more difficult_in the modern era, despite the
destructiveness of modern weaponry.
The astounding proliferation of computers, telecommunications
devices, video recording devices, audiotape cassette recorders,
photocopiers, and strong encryption methods in the industrialized
(and industrializing) nations of the world has made imposing censorship
on or jamming these multiply redundant means of command, control and
communications all but impossible for even the most tyrannically minded
nation-state. (And, ironically, nation-states which attempt to prohibit
these liberating technologies pay a severe penalty in terms of their
economic productivity, as is the case today in North Korea.)
However,_knowing_that you're being tyrannized doesn't always mean
that you'll be able to_do_anything about it, if the guns are all in
the hands of the government. Government control over education and
mass communications remains a powerful tool of indoctrination and
propaganda, even when opposed by private ownership of liberating
communications technologies like those listed above. The experience
of the pro-liberty movement in Communist China during the student-led
protests of June 3-4, 1989 shows this very clearly. Despite the
presence of many foreign journalists who were there to cover the visit
of then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and despite the e-mail and
faxes and live satellite feeds which informed the world of the events,
and despite the courage of people brave enough to stand in front of a
tank column, some 5,000 people were slaughtered by an indoctrinated
"People's Army" of peasants from the provinces.
Governments (even democratically elected governments) have always
held the potential for tyranny and mass murder, and the use of "gun
control" laws has acted only to monopolize power further in the hands
of the state. Throughout the twentieth century, governments have
exercised their monopoly of force in ways far more villainous than
any lone criminal or deranged individual is capable of. Tens of
millions of deaths due to Communism in the Soviet Union and China,
another million or so in Cambodia's killing fields, and the millions
murdered at the hands of the Nazis in Germany, not to mention the
millions who died in the wars fought to combat these infernal regimes,
are a testament to the effectiveness of "gun control". Many lesser
known tyrants have also racked up impressive body counts after disarming
their political opponents or despised minority groups. The decades of
tyranny which the former Soviet and Eastern European peoples endured,
and fact that some people were misfortunate enough to have lived out
their entire lives without tasting_once_of liberty, is indeed a tragedy.
Could the wardens of such prison-states have survived, and plundered
the wealth of their country, and enslaved their fellow citizens so
effectively, without the help of "gun control"?
In the United States, we have been spared such dictatorship, but
we_have_seen the racist and unconstitutional internment of Americans of
Japanese ancestry during World War II, the death of American Indians by
the thousands in the wars to establish control of the Western
territories, the statutory deprivation of the civil rights of black
Americans in the century after Emancipation, and the sporadic oppression
of other ethnic and religious minorities throughout our history.
While one might hope to avoid such abuses in the future, it ought to at
least be considered that these American atrocities were the product of
democratically elected governments, and whatever past crimes may have
occurred with the support of the people, at least_we_are at liberty to
change the shape of our future. The Founders of our republic justly
realized that granting_any_government (even a democratically elected
one), a monopoly on force is a risky proposition, and a sure recipe for
eventual tyranny. That is the real reason for the existence of the
Second Amendment, and our history suggests that it has been a very
effective deterrent to the kinds of tyranny and genocide which have
arisen even in some so-called "civilized" countries of the world.
Could American history have been far worse than it is, had the
ambitions of would-be dictators not been restrained by the thought of
the multitude of armed citizens ready to resist the loss of their
liberties? And what of the progress of freedom on Planet Earth without
America's strength and innovation, and the torch of her Liberty
Enlightening The World? It_was_once intellectually fashionable to be
a Communist, and there_were_initially prominent admirers in this country
of the efficiency of the German Third Reich. How might history have
changed, if there were no Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution?
One shudders to consider the possibilities...
Even today, despite the development of weapons capable of massive
and indiscriminate destruction, tyranny must still be imposed at ground
level, if it is to exist at all. Technology has made it far easier
to kill people than to enslave them. Small arms are still sufficient
to tip the balance in favor of survival and eventual victory, and when
combined with the liberating communications technology that saturates
the modern industrialized (and industrializing) nations, they can be
potent weapons indeed. Coordination of forces, and careful choice of
targets can result in the capture of heavier and deadlier weapons
from the enemy, starting from the basic rifles and pistols of the
infantryman, on up to artillery, tanks, helicopters, anti-tank and
anti-aircraft rockets, missile systems, etc.
Communications technology can be used to rally the people to the
cause of liberty, much as VCRs helped the Solidarity movement win
freedom for the people of Poland by putting news censored by the
government onto hundreds of television screens. Even without
sophisticated communications, the Afghan fighters of the mujahedeen
were able to stymie the Soviet Army in Afghanistan for the first few
years of the occupation, and, covertly supplied with tons of Soviet
arms purchased for them by the U.S. and other sympathetic nations,
as well as training and intelligence assistance, the mujahedeen were
able to fight and kill tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan Communist
troops during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation, forcing the much vaunted
Red Army to withdraw in defeat. Most of the weaponry of the mujahedeen
militia in the early years was obtained by capturing Soviet equipment,
or obtained from deserters from the conscript Afghan Communist army,
and by manufacturing home-made copies of captured AK-47 assault rifles
with basic hand tools, and this is what gave them the edge to survive
until foreign help was available, much as France helped the U.S. win
her independence.
The Stinger anti-aircraft missiles the "muj" obtained later from the
U.S. contributed to their victory, but the war was waged guerrilla-
style, and as was the case for the U.S. in the difficult terrain of
Vietnam, fighting an enemy which blended in with the locals, while being
_obviously_foreign yourself, made the Soviets a big fat target.
Both the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, and that of the U.S. in
Vietnam also point to the difficulty in utilizing an armed force
designed to fight a high-tech conventional adversary against a low-
tech, elusive insurgency. The usual radio signals and heat signatures
targeted by electronic warfare don't exist if the enemy is smuggling
weapons through the countryside on horseback!
The tactical difficulty in fighting an_urban_insurgency makes tyranny
a particularly dangerous task in the city as well. The Jewish Ghetto
in Warsaw was almost liquidated by the occupying Nazis between July and
September of 1942, but there were a few hundred out of the few thousands
of Jews who had not yet been sent on the trains to Treblinka and who
felt that they would rather fight than surrender to Hitler's Final
Solution. Armed primarily with pistols, Molotov cocktails, grenades
and explosives, and desperately short of ammunition, the Warsaw
Ghetto fighters were able to hold off the Waffen-SS for almost a month
in April of 1943, killing a dozen or more Nazis and wounding many more,
before leading a few survivors out under the walls through the sewers of
Warsaw, even as the Nazis demolished the Ghetto with aerial bombs and
finally burned what remained to the ground.
If these Jewish fighters had been as well-armed as some of their
Israeli descendants are today, who knows how history might have turned
out? Even the much-celebrated German war profiteer and industrialist
Oskar Schindler armed his Jewish workforce better than the Ghetto
fighters. By the end of the war, many of "Schindler's Jews" had been
provided with_machineguns!_ (A fact that Steven Spielberg chose to
leave out of his award-winning movie.)
One need not be paranoid about the possibility of genocide, any
more than one need be paranoid about flying in a jumbo jet. But the
fact that airplane crashes that kill hundreds of people occur only
_rarely_doesn't mean that we don't need the safety systems which help
protect us from that eventuality, or that we ought to be dismantling
them. A longstanding tradition of civilian control over the military,
and a rich legacy and cultural love of liberty among soldiers and
civilians willing to fight for its defense won't disappear overnight.
Chances are only a few police or military would join in any tyrannical
endeavor in these United States, but who knows what perils the future
may hold for our great-grandchildren --and_their_grandchildren.
One hopes the military will always take seriously its oath to
preserve, protect and defend our Constitution against all the enemies
of liberty, both foriegn_and_domestic; and that police will refuse to
enforce laws which are unconstitutional, and will refuse to be corrupted
by power and illicit wealth. But history has taught us that many
unthinkable things are indeed possible, and that in Alexander Hamilton's
words "To model our political system upon speculations of lasting
tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human
character."
The Founders of this country knew the road that "gun control" leads
to quite well, no matter what "good intentions" are claimed for it.
It was the British attempt on April 18-19, 1775 to seize and destroy
the colonists' arsenal stored near Lexington, at Concord Massachusetts,
that prompted Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott to
ride and alert the countryside. The contingent of 700 British troops
marched up the road from Boston, and at Lexington Green were met by 70
colonial Minutemen (so-called because they were supposedly ready to
fight on a minute's notice). The British had cannon, and would use them
when the Minutemen refused the British order to throw down their arms
and disperse. In the subsequent skirmish there were a few casualties
on each side, but the Minutemen did disperse, and the Redcoats then
proceeded past Lexington to Concord, where they destroyed what few
munitions and supplies the colonists had been unable to remove in the
additional time that eight Minutemen had purchased with their lives.
From the countryside, alerted by the news of the riders and
Minutemen, and by alarm bells and warning cannon shots, came the
citizen militia, the good men of Lexington and Concord, some 4,000
strong, ready with their loaded muskets in hand. It was only then
the Redcoats began their retreat to Boston, surrounded by angry
colonial snipers shooting from cover behind trees, stone walls,
hedgerows, and houses, who kept up the barrage in engagement after
engagement along the length of the road, picking off 273 British
soldiers (killing 73 of them) while incurring only 95 casualties
themselves (of which 49 died). This was "The Shot Heard Round the
World" and the humble beginning of the American Revolution.
---
APPENDIX I.
The Biggest Myths of "Gun Control":
A Look At U.S. Federal Legislation
[Disclaimer: Firearms laws change frequently, and vary from state
to state. None of the information contained in Appendix I should
be considered legal advice or a legal restatement of any Federal
firearms laws or regulations. Consult a lawyer, your local law
enforcement, and/or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for
further information regarding firearms laws and taxes in your area.]
"Nonmailable Firearms Act" of 1927 - Public Law 69-583
--
This act, actually titled "An Act Declaring pistols, revolvers, and
other firearms capable of being concealed on the person nonmailable
and providing penalty," may well be the first "gun control" law
enacted at the federal level in the United States. It provided for a
fine of up to $1,000 and/or 2 years in prison for sending concealable
firearms through the the mail, with exceptions for the military,
other government agencies, and the repair and return of firearms by
the manufacturer.
National Firearms Act (NFA'34) - Public Law 73-474
--
The violence associated with alcohol Prohibition, and the threat of
Communist and anarchist subversion during the 1930s, prompted in 1934
the restriction of so-called "gangster weapons" from availability
to the general public. The weapons defined as "firearms" under the
NFA include machineguns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, "zip"
guns (homemade firearms) which use rifle or shotgun ammunition,
silencers, and "destructive devices" (artillery, bombs, grenades,
and other guns over .50 caliber, excluding ordinary shotguns). The
act also considers any parts of these restricted weapons, or any
weapons easily convertible into a restricted weapon, whether assembled
or not, to be equally restricted. Because of the Second Amendment's
limitation on the power of the Federal Government to simply ban these
weapons outright, a strategy of licensing, registration, and taxation
was used to limit the ownership of weapons which the Congress deemed
undesirable. The act gave regulatory and tax collecting powers to
the Treasury Department's "revenooers" (who were at the time busting
up stills and "speakeasies" and barrels of moonshine), a department
which eventually grew into the current Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms (BATF), a tax collection agency with its own SWAT team.
All NFA weapons are subject to a $200 tax every time their ownership
changes from one federally registered owner to another, and each new
NFA weapon is subject to a manufacturing tax when it is made, and it
must be registered with the BATF in its National Firearms Registry.
To become a registered owner of NFA weapons, a complete FBI background
investigation is done, checking for any criminal history or tendencies
toward violence, and an application must be submitted to the BATF
including two sets of fingerprints, a recent photo, and sworn affidavit
that transfer of the NFA firearm is of "reasonable necessity" and that
sale to and possession of the weapon by the applicant "would be
consistent with public safety." Because the transfer tax for one NFA
weapon is just as high as the cost of a Class III dealer's license, most
machinegun enthusiasts opt for the dealer's license also, if they want
to buy more than one NFA weapon. The Class III FFL (Federal Firearms
License) is good for three years, and a renewal fee of $90 must continue
to be paid in order to maintain the license, every three years. The
license fee to be a dealer in "destructive devices" (tanks, artillery,
and bombs, for example) is considerably steeper, at $1,000_a year._ Even
with a dealer's license, the transfer taxes must still be paid, but some
of the paperwork involved in the transfer is reduced, such as for the
background investigation. Since 1986, no new machineguns have been
available to Class III licensed civilians, despite an unblemished
record of lawful civilian ownership of these guns. (See Firearms Owners
Protection Act, below.)
Since 1934, only one legally owned machinegun (of some 100,000+)
has ever been used in crime, and that was a murder committed by a
law enforcement officer. On September 15th, 1988, a 13-year veteran
of the Dayton, OH police department, Patrolman Roger Waller, then 32,
used his fully automatic MAC-11 .380 cal. submachinegun to kill a
police informant, 52-year-old Lawrence Hileman. Patrolman Waller
pleaded guilty in 1990, and he and an accomplice were sentenced to
18 years in prison. The 1986 'ban' on sales of new machineguns does
not apply to purchases by law enforcement or government agencies.
---
Thanks to the staff of the Columbus, OH Public Library
for the details of the Waller case.
Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA'38) - Public Law 75-785 (repealed)
--
This legislation, not to be confused with the National Firearms Act
passed four years previously, was repealed by Public Law 90-351 in
preparation for the Gun Control Act of 1968 (see below). It required
licensing of manufacturers and dealers for transportation of firearms
and ammunition in interstate and foriegn commerce, and prohibited
interstate and foreign commerce in firearms and ammunition if a valid
license was not held by both parties. It further prohibited transfer
of firearms or ammunition in interstate or foreign commerce to persons
under indictment for a violent crime, convicted violent criminals, and
fugitives from justice; transfer of stolen firearms in interstate or
foreign commerce; and defacement of firearm manufacturer's serial
numbers. It also authorized recordkeeping regulations for firearms
and ammunition dealers. Government agencies and the military were
exempted from the provisions of the act, as were certain other
entities (such as museum firearms collections, and companies
transporting money or valuables) that were exempted by the Treasury.
Violations of the act were punishable by a fine of up to $2,000
and five years in prison.
Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA'68) - Public Law 90-618
--
Amended the National Firearms Act of 1934 (which is a section of
the Internal Revenue excise tax code) to ban the interstate shipment
(primarily mail order, but also just transportation) of firearms
and ammunition, and out-of-state purchase of firearms by individuals,
require record keeping for sales of firearms and ammunition, impose
stiff penalties for use of firearms in the commission of federal
felonies, and prohibit sale of firearms and ammunition to felons
and other dangerous classes of persons. This legislation was pushed
hard by President Johnson and his Attorney General (the notorious
Ramsey Clark), and enacted in the wake of the assassinations of
presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This law is believed to be modeled after
Germany's_Waffengesetz_ [Law on Weapons] of March 18, 1938 (published
in_Reichgesetzblatt_1938, Teil [Part] I, pp. 265-276), because the
Act's author, late U.S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT), had in his
possession a copy of the Nazi Weapons Law around the time he was
drafting the 1968 Gun Control Act. He later requested an English
translation of the German text, a Xerox copy of which_he supplied_
to the Library of Congress, although the Library had copies of its
own which he could have requested to be translated. This was an effort
on his part to fend off criticism that his legislation closely resembled
the law passed under the Third Reich. Senator Dodd didn't need the
translation himself, since he could speak German, and had been a
prosecutor at Nurnberg during the War Crimes Trials of 1945-46, so
he was familiar with German law. The parallels between the two laws
_are_striking (including for the first time the introduction into
American firearms law of the European concept of "sporting purpose,"
a direct translation of "Sport-zwecke" in the 1938 statute), and there
was no apparent reason for Senator Dodd to own a copy of the Nazi
Waffengesetz, or any other Nazi law which did not figure in the
evidence at Nurnberg. Yet own it he did. For more information about
this incident, and a line-by-line comparison of the two laws, see
the book _"Gun Control" Gateway to Tyranny,_by Jay Simkin and Aaron
Zelman, published by JPFO (see above), as well as_Federal Firearms
Legislation - Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile
Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary,_United States Senate,
90th Congress, second session, June 26-28 and July 8-10, 1968;
SuDoc# Y4.J89/2:F51/3 , pp.489-496.
Firearms Owners' Protection Act
(McClure-Volkmer Act) - Public Law 99-308
--
Amended the Gun Control Act of 1968 to repeal some of the sillier
provisions of that enactment, including the ban on transportation
of one's own firearms to another state (which had been a hassle
particularly for hunters), the record keeping requirement on the
sale of ammunition (which generated enormous quantities of useless
paper), the ban on interstate sales of long guns (which, then as
now, are infrequently used in crime); and limited the surprise
inspections of licensed gun dealers' premises to just once a year.
It also made it a federal offense, whether a Federally licensed
firearms dealer or not, to transfer or sell a gun to any individual
who is prohibited by the GCA '68 from owning guns, such as a felon.
In a peculiar procedural move, the House-passed version of this
NRA-backed legislation contained a ban on the possession and transfer
of new machineguns by civilians, which became effective when President
Reagan signed the Act into law, May 19, 1986. Machineguns which
were manufactured prior to that date are regulated under the National
Firearms Act, but those manufactured after the ban cannot be sold
even to civilians who are already licensed to own machineguns.
The Senate approved the machinegun ban language of the House bill
without a roll call vote, though their original bill did not include
the ban amendment added in the House and sponsored by U.S. Rep. William
J. Hughes (D - N.J.). (The parliamentary shenanigans surrounding this
are quite strange, and are found in Congressional Record v.132 p.H1751
and p.S5358.) Essentially, at what was literally the last minute, the
acting chairman of the Committee of the Whole in the then-Democrat-run
House, New York congressman Charles Rangell, declared in a simple voice
vote that Rep. Hughes' "poison pill" amendment had been adopted, and
that the "ayes" had it. This ban has later been found unconstitutional
in the case of_U.S. v. Rock Island Armory_(Federal Supplement, v.773
p.117) but the decision was not appealed to the Supreme Court.
Armor Piercing Ammunition - Public Law 99-408
--
Banned the manufacture and importation of handgun bullets made
of tungsten, steel, iron, brass, bronze, copper, or depleted
uranium, or alloys of these hard metals. (Depleted uranium is
currently used in ammunition for the U.S. Army's M1 Abrams main
battle tank, so presumably the government can keep track of its
limited supply of such an exotic material!) An exemption exists
in the law for steel shotgun shot, which is needed by waterfowl
hunters for compliance with environmental regulations. Armor-
piercing handgun ammunition is regulated as a "destructive device"
under the National Firearms Act, requiring federal permission to
own and manufacture. This law also strengthened penalties for
federal felonies committed with armor-piercing handgun ammunition,
though at the time, no cops had been killed by so called "cop-
killer" bullets. The NRA helped draft the version of the law
which was adopted, so as to exclude ammunition for hunting rifles
and shotguns, which is also capable of defeating soft body armor.
President Clinton has recently revived the "cop-killer bullet"
strategy for "gun control," but it is unlikely that his proposal
will be accepted by the Republican majority in Congress (see 3.4).
Undetectable Firearms Act - Public Law 100-649
--
This 1988 legislation banned production and sale of "plastic" guns
undetectable by metal detectors and X-ray machines, a threat which
(aside from that assassin's derringer in the 1993 Clint Eastwood
movie "In The Line Of Fire") did not exist at the time, and still
doesn't exist. The NRA helped to rewrite this law so as to narrow
its scope, and exclude detectable polymer-frame guns like the light
weight Glock 17 pistols now in common use by police departments.
Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 (void)
(Part of the "Crime Control Act of 1990") - Public Law 101-647
--
Made possession and/or discharge of a firearm on, or within 1000
feet of the grounds of, a public, private, or parochial school
a federal felony punishable by a $5,000 fine and/or 5 years in
prison. The legislation did not apply to non-school private
property located within such a zone, or uses of firearms which
had been approved by the school or by government (such as school
rifle teams, and police). The U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 ruled
this Act to be an unconstitutional extension of the "interstate
commerce" clause (U.S.C. Art I. sec. 8 cl. 3) in_U.S. v. Lopez,_
(U.S. Reports v. 514 p.549, Lawyer's Edition 2nd series v. 131
p.626, Supreme Court Reports v.115 p.1624, 1995) in part because
the Federal government was unlawfully encroaching upon the
traditional powers of the states concerning matters of education
and law enforcement. The Feds had rather tenuously argued that
the effect of guns in schools upon learning, and hence upon
U.S. economic competitiveness, gave them the power to enact
such legislation. The implications of this case upon other
Federal authority to ban possession of weapons within the borders
of the states, and upon the very nature of American federalism
itself and the increasing growth of the Federal law enforcement
function, seem to be substantial. Indeed, the_Lopez_decision was
cited as part of the Court's 1997 ruling in _Printz v. U.S._(see
below) declaring parts of the Brady Act to be unconstitutional.
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (void in part)
- Public Law 103-159
--
Imposes a five working-day waiting period (in reality, a seven day
wait) on the purchase of a handgun, and initially required that
the chief law enforcement officer of the jurisdiction where the
sale is to take place make a "reasonable effort" to determine
whether the purchaser is legally able to own the gun. Though the
Feds had attempted to argue that a "reasonable effort" could mean
_no effort at all_under certain circumstances, the impositions of
the Brady Act on local law enforcement officers were voided as
unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in their June 20, 1997
ruling in _Printz v. U.S._(U.S. Reports v.___ p.____, Supreme Court
Reports v.117 p.2365, Lawyer's Edition 2nd series v.138 p.914).
Cases brought by Sheriff Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana
_Printz v. U.S._(Federal Supplement v. 854 p.1503); and Richard
Mack of Graham County, Arizona _Mack v. U.S._(Federal Supplement
v. 856 p.1372) were considered simultaneously by the high court,
after having been appealed from the U.S. Ninth Circuit. Writing
for the 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia described the Brady
Act as promoting "forced participation of the States' executive in
the actual administration of a federal program," and thus offensive
to the Constitution's system of dual soveriegnty of the state and
Federal governments. Federal power, the Court argued, "would be
augmented immeasurably if [the Federal government] were able to
impress into its service--and at no cost to itself--the police
officers of the 50 States." In particular, Congressional power
would be enhanced, and "the power of the President would be subject
to reduction, if Congress could act as effectively without the
President as with him, by simply requiring state officers to execute
its laws." Further, noted the Court, "[b]y forcing state governments
to absorb the financial burden of implementing a federal regulatory
program, Members of Congress can take credit for 'solving' problems
without having to ask their constituents to pay for the solutions
with higher federal taxes. And even when the States are not forced
to absorb [a program's] costs [...]they are still put in the position
of taking the blame for its burdensomeness and for its defects."
In addition to the Montana and Arizona rulings overturned by the
Ninth Circuit and reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in _Printz,_
three other lower federal court jurisdictions, namely Vermont,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, had earlier held the background check
portions of the Act to be unconstitutional, leaving only the waiting
period standing. See_Frank v. U.S._(Federal Supplement v.860 p.1030),
_McGee v. U.S._(Federal Supplement v.863 p.321), and_Romero v.
U.S._(Federal Supplement v.883 p.1076) which was a 1994 case in the
Federal District Court for Western Louisiana. There was one opposing
ruling: _Koog v. U.S._(Federal Supplement v.852 p.1376) which
was decided in Texas. The_McGee_and_Koog_ cases were combined,
(Federal Reporter 3rd series v.79 p.252) and both lawmen won their
appeals prior to the Supreme Court decision in_Printz._ The appeal
in the_Frank_case was decided after the Supreme Court ruling in
_Printz_(Federal Reporter 3rd series v.127 p.273), as was an appeal
in the case of_Lee v. U.S.,_which was brought by a New Mexico lawman,
and appealed to the U.S. Tenth Circuit. The Supreme Court had spoken,
and other pending cases were made moot. A question left unresolved
by_Printz_is whether licensed handgun dealers must still forward
Brady forms to their local chief law enforcement officers (CLEOs)
even if CLEOs do not have to accept them!
Remarkably, the Brady Act does not exempt persons who already own
a handgun from the waiting period or background check (as though they
would require a_new_gun each time if they were inclined to commit a
crime!). A reasonable way to do this would be to exempt all holders
of concealed carry permits. The Brady Act sunsets to a computerized
instant background check system in those states which adopt such, and
what remains of the Brady Act is scheduled to expire November 30, 1998,
unless renewed.
It is anticipated that a national instant-check FBI database will be
in place by that time, but delay in implementing instant-check might
be used as an excuse to renew Brady, although a repeat of the hard-won
political struggle which produced this constitutionally misbegotten Act
in the first place seems unlikely to proceed with a Republican-dominated
Congress. The instant check provisions of the Brady Act were added
thanks to lobbying by the NRA. And yes, it's true, the Brady law
wouldn't have stopped John Hinckley. He had no prior felony record,
his mental illness was covered up by his wealthy family, and he had
bought the .22 revolver he used months earlier.
Public Safety And Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act
(part of the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,
a.k.a. the "Crime Bill" which was signed by President Clinton
on September 13, 1994) - Public Law 103-322
--
Defines a new class of firearms "semi-automatic assault weapons"
based upon their military-style appearance, despite the fact that
they are functionally identical to and shoot the same ammunition as
many other rifles, pistols and shotguns. Prohibits the manufacture
of "semi-automatic assault weapons" for sale to civilians after the
effective date, a provision which is prima facie unconstitutional
under the Second Amendment. Classifies magazines which hold more
than 10 rounds of ammunition as "high capacity ammunition feeding
devices" and bans their manufacture for sale to civilians after the
effective date, a provision affecting both handguns and long guns.
Exempts customers of pawnbrokers from the Brady Act when recovering
their pawned handguns. The parliamentary shenanigans surrounding
this legislation are also curious, since the initial House rules
vote effectively killed the Crime Bill, but the Republicans weren't
content to declare victory, and subsequently the House trimmed a
bit of the fat out of the spending portion of the bill, and passed
it anyway, sending a crime bill opposed by the NRA, the ACLU, and most
Americans on to the Senate for final passage. Democrats, despite
being the majority in both houses, and holding the White House, found
difficulty passing a supposed anti-crime measure in an election year!
The Democrats subsequently suffered an historic defeat at the polls
in November, leading to the election of Republican majorities in
both houses of Congress, and the first Republican House since 1952.
The most immediate effect of the "assault weapons" legislation was
to encourage gun manufacturing and sales prior to the enactment date,
including speculative investment in the banned weapons, some of whose
prices increased greatly (though they have now begun to decline again).
The ban is scheduled to repeal itself ten years after its date of
enactment, which will be on September 13, 2004. Lawsuits are currently
pending which attack the semi-auto ban as being unconstitutionally
vague-- in other words, so poorly written that it is difficult to
determine what type of weapons are permissible.
1994 was certainly a banner year!
APPENDIX II.
Concealed Carry Reality vs. "Gunshine State" Fantasy
Murder rates in Florida Cities included in U. Maryland CCW 'study'
Source: _Uniform Crime Reports_ for the United States, 19xx-1995,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Dept. of Justice,
SuDoc# J 1.14/7:9xx
pop. = population (city limits, in thousands)
MNNM = murder/non-negligent manslaughter
MN100K = population-adjusted rate of MNNM (per 100,000 persons)
1984 1985 1986 1987* 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995
Miami
pop. 400.6 385.9 396.4 385.1 381.2 358.5 367.9 373.8 372.5 380.0 378.7
MNNM 170 131 148 128 132 129 134 128 127 116 110
MN100K 42.4 33.9 37.3 33.2 34.6 36.0 36.4 34.2 34.1 30.5 29.0
Tampa
pop. 289.3 285.3 293.0 285.9 289.4 280.0 287.4 291.9 288.9 294.7 289.9
MNNM 52 70 79 61 57 60 64 49 43 62 47
MN100K 18.0 24.5 27.0 21.3 19.7 21.4 22.3 16.8 14.9 21.0 16.2
Jacksonville
pop. 582.4 601.0 616.7 629.9 654.7 636.7 653.5 663.9 672.3 685.8 679.1
MNNM 103 90 119 147 165 176 128 123 125 106 86
MN100K 17.7 15.0 19.3 23.3 25.2 27.6 19.6 18.5 18.6 15.5 12.7
Statewide, FL (FL, 1963 = 8.2)
MN100K 11.5 11.4 11.7 11.4 11.1 10.7 9.4 9.0 8.9 8.4 7.3
U.S. (U.S. 1963 = 4.6)
MN100K 7.9 7.9 8.6 8.3 8.7 9.4 9.8 9.3 9.5 9.0 8.2
* Data for 1988 in the states of Florida and Kentucky were
not available due to reporting problems at the state level.
Analysis: Figures for cities given are for city limits, not metro
area, although metro area figures are available. As more violent
crime tends to occur in urban areas, rather than suburbs, however,
if anything, the figures ought to be biased in the direction of
more murders, rather than fewer. Each of the cities included in
the U. Maryland study has shown declines in murder/non-negligent
manslaughter rates per 100,000 population since the passage of
Florida's concealed carry reform law in 1987. This is not to say
that the increase in concealed carry permits_caused_this decline,
but it does show that murder rates have declined, rather than
increased, since the law was enacted. Further, the statewide
murder/non-negligent manslaughter rates for Florida (per 100,000
population) have declined from well above the national rate to
slightly below the national rate during this same period, and are
now below where they were over 30 years ago, prior to enactment of
major federal gun control bills like the 1968 Gun Control Act, which
prohibited mail order gun sales to ordinary citizens, among other
restrictions. It is interesting to note that, of the three Florida
cities selected by the U. Maryland researchers as the basis of their
'study', all three have historical rates of murder/non-negligent
manslaughter_much_higher_than the average for the state as a whole,
which raises questions concerning how representative a sample they are,
especially considering that the concealed-carry law applies statewide.
Essentially, the U. Maryland study may only have demonstrated what
was already known, namely that urban areas often have higher violent
crime rates than non-urban areas, and that the rates of violent crime
in the U.S have increased since the late 1960s. (In comparing a
baseline of 1973-1986 to the 1987-1991 period, the question remains
whether one could observe similar or worse increases in homicides
in areas_not_subject to concealed carry reform laws.) The University
of Maryland researchers have not stated whether they blame concealed-
carry permit holders for the increase in homicides which they noted
in their study, but evidence from the Florida Department of State
which issues the permits shows that crime among CCW permit holders
is virtually unknown (Kleck,_Point Blank,_see 3.8).
APPENDIX III. - "Gun control": international comparisons
See_The Samurai, The Mountie, And The Cowboy,_by David Kopel,
Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-756-6, (1992) [Kopel's book
received the Comparative Criminology award from the American
Society for Criminology in 1992.]
_Lost Rights,_by James Bovard (see above)
[Disclaimer: The following represents the most recent information
available to me regarding the listed countries, and is derived
from publicly available sources. Firearms laws change frequently,
and vary from place to place. None of the information contained in
Appendix III should be considered legal advice or a legal restatement
of the firearms laws and regulations of any of the listed countries.
Consult a lawyer familiar with the firearms laws of the particular
country or region of interest for further information. Your mileage
may vary. Always read and follow label directions. The gun is always
loaded unless you've inspected the chamber yourself. Always keep the
weapon pointed in a safe direction. Identify your target, and know
your backstop. Always eject the magazine before clearing the chamber,
and never the other way around. Keep out of reach of children. Always
wear your safety belt, even with airbags. Don't drink and drive.]
JAPAN
An island nation with a truly insular culture for much of its long
history, Japan has only recently (since 1946) become a democratic
state. The authoritarian values of its past still linger, both in
the willing submission of most Japanese to the authority of the
state, and their dependence upon that authority for their personal
security (a faith somewhat shaken recently by the March 20, 1995
nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway). A remarkably homogenous,
virtually monoethnic society, with strong traditions of conformity
and propriety; combined with what many_gaijin_ (foreigners, lit.
"outside people") would describe as extraordinary (and intrusive)
police powers, helps keep crime rates very low. What serious crime
that does occur is dealt with very strictly, and in keeping with
Japan's traditional authoritarian tendencies. Most criminal suspects
are induced to confess, either through offers of more lenient
treatment, or are coerced into doing so through tactics like sleep
deprivation and relentless interrogation, and on occasion, physical
abuse. Particularly effective in extracting confessions and other
expressions of remorse from criminal suspects is the fact that
police can detain suspects for more than three weeks without charges,
and conduct interrogations without legal counsel present. Suspects'
confessions are a highly prized form of evidence in Japan, and can be
admissible even if obtained through coercion. Confessions from
criminal suspects are essentially a condition of bail, and a starting
point from which to gather the evidence needed for conviction. Jury
trials are not required in criminal cases, and search warrants are not
ordinarily required either. Police have broad discretion to disarm
people and seize weapons, and illegally seized evidence is often
still admissible.
There is a death penalty in Japan, hanging, though it is rare
and exercised with great secrecy, such that even the families of
the condemned do not learn of the execution until prison authorities
send a telegram asking whether the family would like the body cremated
or if they will come to the prison to pick it up! Condemned prisoners
without close relatives are simply "removed" from the government's
records when their executions are carried out. Though prison
sentences are usually short, Japanese prisons often require that
prisoners live in isolation, sometimes with little exercise, and have
no communication with other prisoners, minimizing risks of prison
riots, rapes, fights, and other violence, but at substantial cost to
prisoners' physical and psychological health. Even with this harsh
treatment, repeat offender (recidivism) rates are fairly high.
Prisoners can also be forced to work for prison industries which
are organized in cooperation with private corporations. In short,
although "gun control" is very strict, even non-gun crime rates are
kept low by implementation of what is essentially a police state.
Broad police authority in turn makes for easy enforcement of gun laws
against a population which has been kept disarmed by its rulers
for hundreds of years.
Handguns absolutely prohibited to civilians, yet organized criminals,
called_Boryokudan,_"violent organizations," or_Yakuza,_"hoodlums,"
still have them, and commit some 200 violent crimes with them
annually. Japanese police rarely use guns themselves, relying
instead on martial arts training (judo and kendo), and police batons.
About the only way a civilian can own or use a handgun legally is
to be a competitive target shooter, and only 50 such pistol licenses
are issued in the entire country! There are also 500 air pistol
licenses issued, all for competition target shooters. The only
legitimate reasons any civilian can own any gun in Japan are for
target shooting or hunting, and never for self-defense. Rifle owners
must be licensed, and rifles must be turned in to the police when the
license holder dies. Shotguns and air rifles (the most commonly owned
types of guns in Japan) must also be licensed, and all guns must be
stored unloaded in a gun safe separate from any ammunition, and in
a location known to the police. Pistols (other than air pistols)
must be stored in a locker at the local police station. All firearms
and ammunition in Japan must be registered, and no guns which hold
six or more rounds in the magazine (3 rounds for sporting shotguns)
may be owned in Japan. Needless to say, machineguns are prohibited
to civilians.
Licenses issued primarily to hunters and sportsmen, and for skeet
and small caliber target shooting. Licensees for all guns (except
air guns) must submit to a background investigation of their entire
household. Background checks are extensive (including checking for
political affiliation, a ten-year history of addresses, jobs, gun
ownership, etc.), as well as medical certification that the licensee
is mentally healthy and not addicted to drugs. Hunting with small-
bore (.22 cal) rifles is already prohibited in Japan, and large-bore
may soon be as well, once the existing hunting rifle licenses expire.
Getting such a hunting rifle license requires, on paper at least,
a ten-year history of continuous participation in shotgun or small-
bore rifle shooting, and applying for the gun to the local police
station.
Prospective licensees wanting to own_any_gun must attend a one
day lecture held only once each month at the local police station,
and pass a written 20-question exam with a score of 14 or more correct
answers, in order to be eligible to_apply_for a license. The
certification of having taken this class is valid for three years,
and Japanese gun owners must re-take the class every three years to
get re-certified, but for the renewal there is no test required. New
licensees for shotguns and rifles must also shoot a practical course.
Then, it takes a month or so for the police to process the extensive
paperwork required and to complete the background investigation
before they can grant permission. Once this is completed, a license
booklet, which resembles a passport, is issued, and the purchase is
authorized. The licensee must return to the police station with the
gun within two weeks of purchase in order to have the gun inspected
and the proper stamp placed on the license. Permission from the
police is also required to purchase ammunition for guns (other than
air rifle pellets), and all guns (and ammunition expended) must be
accounted for to the police on an annual basis. Hunters must obtain
a separate license to hunt in addition to the license required for
owning a hunting rifle. Hunting licenses are issued by the Governor
of each prefecture, and applying for one requires an additional course
and test which must be passed. The major shooting sports organization
in Japan is the Nihon Raiforu Shageki Kyokai [Japan Rifle Shooting
Association, abbreviated in English as NRA], and shooters are required
to join at least the local NRA affiliate in order to participate in
target shooting sports. Shooters must participate in matches in order
to keep their license properly stamped and current. If the license
is not kept current, and more than three years has elapsed since it
was last used, it cannot be renewed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Japanese information adapted in part from postings by
Masaaki Ishida (golgo17@RKBAcatnet.ne.jp) and
Tetsuya Nishimura (tetsuyan@RKBAaol.com)
CANADA
Search warrants only required for residences (and then not in
all circumstances), police given discretion to perform searches
of persons, vehicles, and premises (other than homes) for illegal
weapons and to seize weapons, use of registration lists as the
basis for "reasonable grounds" to authorize search and as consent
to search is commonplace. Police are less likely to use deadly
force to apprehend and control criminals than in the United States.
Handguns permitted if registered, as they are considered "restricted
weapons" (as are many rifles and shotguns). All "restricted" weapons
must be registered with the police, and "restricted" weapons may be
only purchased for one of four purposes: protection of life where
other protection is inadequate, target practice under the auspices
of a shooting club, in connection with a lawful profession or
occupation, or as part of a "bona-fide gun collector's" collection.
All firearms must be stored unloaded in a securely locked container
when not in use, and kept separate from ammunition. Trigger locks are
required for those restricted weapons not stored in a safe or vault.
Police may inspect the security of the storage arrangement of
restricted weapons at their discretion. Transport of firearms
requires a permit, and there are no actual "carry" permits issued
except as a condition of employment. Firearms may not be transported
without permit, and permits are only issued for transportation to
and from the gunsmith (or a new address), to and from the range or
shooting club, and to and from the police station where the gun
is registered. "Prohibited" weapons in Canada include short
barreled or "sawed-off" shotguns and rifles, silencers, and all
machineguns not registered prior to January 1, 1978; as well as
chemical defensive sprays (like OC), and electric stun guns.
Since few machineguns were registered prior to that date, and all
machineguns manufactured subsequent to that date are prohibited,
many machineguns were converted to semi-automatic in Canada in an
effort to comply with the law, but are still subject to confiscation.
Hollowpoint handgun ammunition is prohibited to Canadian civilians,
as is OC pepper spray, because effective self-defense is not
considered to be a reasonable use of such weapons by anyone but
police. Weapons may be added to the "restricted" list (or the
"prohibited" list) by administrative fiat, called an "Order In
Council," and issued by the Minister of Justice. Legislation
passed by Parliament in 1995 (Bill C-68) has expanded this fiat
power to include all previously non-restricted "sporting" guns
(including antique guns as well), resulting in the addition of most
semi-automatic rifles to the "prohibited" list, banning of .25
and .32 caliber handguns and all handguns with a barrel length
of less than 4 inches [105mm] (which will be destroyed without
compensation upon the death of their current registered owners),
adding a requirement for registration of all firearms in Canada
(not just "prohibited" weapons), and greatly extending police
power to conduct warrantless searches for all types of weapons,
including searches for/of paper-based and computer records, as
well as compelling citizens to assist police in their inspections.
Prospective firearms owners must obtain a licence, called a Firearms
Acquisition Certificate (FAC), in order to purchase any firearms,
which is good for five years, and is basically a "must issue" system,
and also enables FAC holders to purchase non-restricted "sporting"
rifles or shotguns by mail-order. Licensees must take classes, pass
tests, supply a recent, good-quality photo, fill out a four page
application and answer questions about recent relationships and
business failures, supply the references of at least two persons
who have known them for at least three years (must be a fellow
employee, spouse, minister, doctor, lawyer, tribal elder, etc.),
pass a background check in the Canadian Police Information
Computer (CPIC) [which lists all "encounters" with police
in Canada, not just criminal convictions], pay a $50 fee, and
wait at least 28 days before getting the FAC (with a typical
wait being six to eight weeks). Confidential medical information
need not be disclosed to the police in Canada, unlike the situation
in some U.S. states.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Canadian information adapted in part from posts
by Skeeter Abell-Smith (ab133@RKBAsfn.saskatoon.sk.ca)
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
America's "War on Drugs" has brought with it increased use of both
warrantless searches and so-called "no-knock" warrants (in which
police are authorized to break down doors without warning, in an
effort to prevent destruction of evidence). Both practices are
strictly contrary to Fourth Amendment protections against illegal
search and seizure, but are nonetheless commonplace, particularly
in public housing projects, where the Clinton Administration has
sought to increase their use in "cleaning up" crime ridden slums
by seizing drugs and weapons. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has
recently ruled that the categorical issuance of "no knock" warrants
in drug cases would render the Fourth Amendment's protection against
unreasonable searches "meaningless," re-affirming judicial review of
warrants in the case of_Richards v. Wisconsin_ (U.S. Reports v.___
p.___, Supreme Court Reports v.117 p.1416, Lawyer's Edition 2nd
series v.137 p.615, 1997). Such warrants aren't "unreasonable"
the Court said, so long as police have a "reasonable suspicion" that
announcing their presence would be dangerous or futile, or permit
destruction of evidence. Police in the United States are more
circumspect about violating the civil rights of wealthier Americans,
though such violations too, have been more common of late. The use
of asset forfeiture laws to seize property believed to have been
obtained with drug money has resulted in some harassment of wealthy
Americans, who must then prove that their assets were obtained
legally, a requirement which turns the presumption of innocence
on its head. Persons with large amounts of cash have been detained
and their currency seized on suspicion of carrying drug money.
Corruption of law enforcement has become a serious problem in
several major U.S. cities, such as New Orleans and Washington, D.C.
The threat of domestic and international terrorism has also been
used as a pretext for limiting the civil rights of all Americans.
Prominent cases of civil rights violations by the Bureau of Alcohol
Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI have outraged millions of Americans,
and increased their traditional distrust of government. The jury
system in several prominent cases has shown signs of stress. High
levels of violent crime associated with drug prohibition, while still
confined largely to America's most blighted inner cities, have been
terrifyingly recalcitrant to the efforts of the justice system,
and have inspired fear even in those not directly affected by crime,
resulting in the increased desperation of further "gun control"
measures, adding one futile layer of prohibition upon another.
Distrust of government and its demonstrated ineffectiveness at
controlling violent crime has prompted_both_increased calls for
"gun control" and the loss of other traditional American liberties,
as well as increased purchase of guns, and political opposition to
"gun control" by Americans suspicious of government's ability and
inclination to protect them and their civil rights.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Constitution still protects the civil
rights of all Americans to freedom of speech, freedom of the press,
freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, the right
to peaceably assemble, and to be free from the abuses of arbitrary
power which many of the peoples of the world still must endure.
The United States is still one of the most heavily armed nations in
the world, and weapons of all types are legally available to her
citizens with a greater degree of freedom than in most any other
industrialized nation. The right to keep and bear arms is a part
of the constitutions of 43 of her 50 states, and is protected by
the federal Constitution of 1789 as amended in 1791. Machineguns,
short-barreled and "sawed-off" shotguns and rifles, silencers,
and military heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery, and other
"destructive devices" can be legally owned with the proper Federal
permission, which requires an FBI background check, and a $200
transfer tax. New machineguns manufactured after May 19, 1986
have been banned from sale to civilians, in violation of the Second
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Manufacture of certain types
of semi-automatic firearms which superficially resemble military
weapons, and of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of
ammunition has been banned from sale to the public since September
13, 1994; also a violation of the Second Amendment. As with the
machineguns, all of the banned weapons and magazines manufactured
prior to the ban dates are still legal to own. Handguns, rifles,
and shotguns are prohibited in only some states and localities,
usually those localities having a higher than average crime rate.
There is no national licensing or centralized national registration
system, except for those weapons which require Federal permission
and the transfer tax (NFA weapons). Handguns are registered in a
decentralized, paper-based records system which records information
about the purchaser for those handguns bought through a federally
licensed dealer, which includes all new handguns and a substantial
number of used ones. There are several state and local licensing
and registration requirements, ranging from de facto prohibition
of firearms, to unlicensed concealed carry. If there is any
correlation between gun ownership, gun laws, and crime, it is
arguably an inverse relationship in the United States.
GREAT BRITAIN
As is the case in Canada, British subjects are subject to warrantless
searches of persons and vehicles at police discretion, but searches
of residences still require a warrant (in most instances). Arrests
without warrant are common, and police have substantial discretion
to conduct search and seizures of weapons. Interrogation without
counsel is permitted, and evidence obtained from coerced confessions
is permitted. Jury trials for serious crimes are conducted without
many of the preemptory motions which can be used to dismiss biased
jurors in the United States, and the distinction between prosecutors
and defense attorneys (barristers) is not as clear cut as in the U.S.
British subjects lack the protection of the rights of free speech,
press, assembly, or to keep and bear arms, against the powers of the
Parliament, which combines the legislative and executive functions of
American government, and whose acts are not subject to judicial review
by a Supreme Court, as there is no written Constitution. Liberty in
Britain is protected only by the common law, and by tradition. Police
in Britain are primarily unarmed, although their use of weapons is
increasing in response to increased danger from criminals, who can
still obtain firearms, despite being on an island with more easily
defensible and secure borders than is the case in the United States.
Those police who do carry weapons carry them concealed in many cases.
Shrinking police budgets in some localities have resulted in the
extensive use of public surveillance video cameras by police, a
development which doesn't bode well for the right to privacy.
As in Japan, shotguns are easily the most popular firearms in Great
Britain, and have a special place in British firearms law (despite
being perhaps the most deadly of firearms, short of machineguns).
The special treatment of shotguns descends from the popularity of
bird hunting among many British landowners. As large game is
comparatively absent from Britain, rifles are more commonly
associated with their military use than with hunting. All shotguns
in Britain must be registered, and the prospective owners must show
"good reason" in order to be able to purchase one having greater
than a 3-round capacity. (Shotguns with 3-round or less capacity
are exempt from the "good reason" requirement.) Bolt-action and
lever-action rifles are likewise permitted only if the prospective
owner can show "good reason" for such ownership, such as being a
hunter, or member of a shooting club. All centre-fire semiautomatic
and pump-action rifles are banned, whether they resemble military
guns or not, and are subject to confiscation with reimbursement at
half the gun's purchase price or L150, whichever is less. All
handguns are banned, as a result of legislation passed by both
the Conservative (Tory) and Labour governments since the murders
on March 13, 1996 of 16 Scottish kindergartners and their teacher
in Dunblane by a deranged man armed with four licensed pistols.
The Firearms (Amendments) Act passed by the Tories on November 18,
1996 required handguns larger than .22 calibre be surrendered in
exchange for a government cheque between July 1st and September 30th
of 1997. When Tony Blair's Labour government got elected, they
extended the ban June 11, 1997 to include_all_civilian-held handguns
in Britain, which must be surrendered by the end of February, 1998.
The first round of buybacks collected some 160,000+ primarily
legally-held (and, of course,_registered_) pistols at a cost of
L150 million. As in Canada, self-defense is not considered a "good
reason" for owning any gun, and as in Canada, chemical defensive
sprays like tear gas and OC pepper spray have been prohibited to
the public. Martial arts weapons and the carry of knives in public
has also been banned. (There have even been knife "turn-in"
programmes!) Shotgun shells and other ammunition must be registered
at purchase, and are only sold to shotgun or firearms licence holders.
Hollowpoint ammunition is also banned by the recent Firearms Act.
All firearms must be stored securely to the satisfaction of local
police, or the required licences may not be renewed. Similar coercion
is used to obtain inspections of the storage location, at police
discretion. As many police chiefs in Britain, as in the U.S., are
hostile to private firearms ownership, even the issuance of shotgun
licences is on the decline. (There are currently about 500,000
shotgun certificates and 140,000 firearm certificates on issue in
the U.K.) Further anti-gun legislation is expected by British
shooters, including bans on cap-and-ball revolvers, lever-action
rifles, and possibly even shotguns...
British subjects who wish to own firearms must obtain either a shotgun
certificate, or a firearms certificate (applicable to bolt- and lever
action rifles) from the local police station, which requires, as in
Canada, two personal references from persons of good standing
(such as an MP, justice of the peace, minister of religion, doctor,
lawyer, civil servant, etc.) who have known the applicant for at
least two years, as well as showing "good reason" for being permitted
to obtain the gun. The "good reason" must include proof of the
applicant's membership in a shooting club, or a letter from a
landowner granting permission to hunt on his land. The applicant
must specify full details of the type and calibre of weapon, and
explain where the weapon will be stored and used, as well as the
maximum quantity of ammunition planned to be kept and purchased.
The application fee is L56, and within two to four weeks a police
officer will visit to interview the applicant and to inspect the
storage location and security measures. Once issued a Fire Arms
Certificate (FAC) it is valid only for purchase of the gun and
ammunition specified on it, and a gun purchaser must notify the
Chief Constable of the local Police Authority within a few days
after purchase of the gun for which permission has been granted.
Disposal of the gun doesn't renew the permission, and if another gun
or another calibre is desired, a new application must be submitted.
Each certificate must be renewed after five years, and the gun owner
must go through the whole application procedure again, including
payment of the L56 application fee. Issuance of these certificates
is discretionary in Britain, unlike the case in Canada.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
British law coverage based in part on a posting by David Rees
(drees@RKBAnovell.com.uk), as well as text of the Firearms Act
(located at http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1997/1997005.html ),
and press reports.
SWITZERLAND
Switzerland places a far heavier reliance on decentralized government,
and individual responsibility, which, when combined with a greater
degree of social control than Americans would likely tolerate, helps
keep the crime rate low. Switzerland's current constitution, which
was adopted in 1848, reflects the influence of the United States, in
that it for the first time recognized individual rights, rather than
only the rights of the various cultural, linguistic, and religious
groups which form the basis of cantonal (state) distinctions. Crime
has increased slightly in recent years, but much of Swiss crime is
attributable to the drug trade and to foreigners. Swiss citizens are
generally_very_law abiding, and the Swiss have not seen the need
for the sorts of harsh justice and broad police powers seen elsewhere.
There is no death penalty, and sentences in Switzerland are usually
short for all crimes except murder. All prisoners must serve at least
two-thirds of their nominal sentences. Judges are popularly elected
in some cantons. Violent movies can be banned, and racist and anti-
Semitic acts, speech or publications are strictly prohibited. Arrests
can only be made with warrant, and suspects must be charged within
24 hours after arrest. Foreigners who have been denied political
asylum, however, can be held in administrative detention for up to a
year if they are considered a risk to escape deportation. Foreigners
can also be stopped by police on the street and asked for their
identity papers. Police permits are required for public meetings,
but are generally issued unless there is the likelihood of violence.
Some cantons have official state-sponsored churches, but taxes to fund
them are optional. Though narcotics are illegal, the laws have only
recently been enforced with any severity. Swiss banking secrecy laws
have led to the Swiss confederation becoming a center for drug money
laundering. Zurich's notorious Platzspitz "Needle" Park was closed
several years ago for public health reasons, and because international
publicity about the park had attracted drug dealers and criminals.
Other Swiss cities with similar parks have also sought to close them
to drug users, and some drug abusers are instead now being given their
drugs under medical supervision, as a public health measure. Violent
crime is still rare, despite the widespread availability of weapons.
Switzerland requires mandatory military service for its men, but there
is only a small standing army. The Swiss rely upon a militia system
for defense of the confederation, and because of this, ownership of
all types of military weapons is more widespread even than in the
United States. The front line troops of the_Auszug_must keep their
fully-automatic military assault rifle and seventy-two rounds of
sealed ammunition at home during their term of service from age 21-32.
The current issue militia weapons are the SIG Sturmgewehr 90 (.223)
and SIG Sturmgewehr 550/551 (.223) assault rifles, and the SIG-Sauer
P220 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Even after their service in the
_Auszug,_Swiss men still remain part of the militia, either in a
home guard (_Landwehr_), or reserve capacity (_Landsturm_) until
age 42 (52 for officers). Practice with weapons is a popular
recreation, and is encouraged by the government, particularly for
the members of the militia. "Ordnance" ammunition is subsidized
and available for sale at shooting ranges, and there is a regulatory
requirement that ammo sold at ranges must be used there, but this
is never really enforced. Sale of all ammunition is registered
at the dealer if purchased at a private store, but it is not
registered if purchased at a range. All types of ammunition are
available for commercial sale, including calibers for military-issue
weapons, and hollowpoints. Ammunition sales are registered only
at the point of sale by recording the buyer's name in a bound book.
Semi-automatic rifles are registered at the dealer and with the
police in those cantons having registration at all, otherwise only
full-automatics and other military guns must be registered with
the government. Unlike the United States, handgun purchases aren't
even registered in some cantons. Restrictions on the purchase of
non-lethal weapons like pepper spray, which had been in effect in
some cantons, have been eased.
Purchase of handguns is licensed on a "must issue" basis at the cantonal
(state) level, with "firearms purchase certificates" issued to all
adult residents without criminal records or history of mental illness.
Handguns and semi-automatic rifles are registered using the same
"triple-sheet" form in those cantons which have any registration, with
one copy going to the police, one to the dealer, and one to the owner.
One canton doesn't require a license for handgun purchases, and
purchase of hunting guns and most types of semi-automatic shotguns
and rifles usually require no permits. Since actual military guns are
issued freely (albeit with a licensing and registration requirement
at the cantonal level), controls on other guns can be comparatively
mild. There are no restrictions on the carrying of long guns, and
only fifteen of the twenty-six cantons require carry permits for
handguns (which usually require that "necessity" for carrying the
handgun be demonstrated). Laws have been passed which restrict the
purchase and carry of weapons by non-Swiss citizens like Turks and
people from the embattled area of the former Yugoslavia. There have
been calls for more "gun control" from some quarters in Swiss society
(including Swiss anti-gun criminologist, Martin Killias) but the
tradition of Switzerland's armed citizenry is being kept alive by
the activist gun owners organization ProTell (named after Swiss hero
and marksman William Tell), which is associated with the Swiss
Riflemen's Society, much as the NRA-ILA is associated with NRA
in the United States. There are also several other shooting sports
organizations.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Swiss information updated with the kind help of
Emmanuel Baechler (ebaechle@RKBAhospvd.ch)
GERMANY
Law enforcement in Germany is primarily the responsibility of the
Laender (state governments) but the Federal Office handles crimes like
narcotics smuggling, gun running, and counterfeiting. Search warrants
are required for searches of residences, and arrest warrants are
required for arrest. German police must charge suspects within 24
hours of arrest. Freedom of speech and assembly is constitutionally
limited, and certain organizations (such as neo-Nazis) are illegal.
Sadly, much of the neo-Nazi propaganda, and some of the organizers of
such groups, have their origin in the United States. Although crime
has risen in Germany since 1990, the criminal misuse of guns accounts
for a tiny fraction of criminal acts. While negligible in comparison
to the United States, the use of guns by criminals in Germany is on
the increase, and a number of Germans have armed themselves in
response (including ethnic minorities). There is also some increase
in cross-border crime between Eastern Germany and the relatively poor
neighboring nations of the former Soviet bloc like Poland and
Czechoslovakia, much as occurs between the United States and poorer
neighboring Mexico. Despite strict "gun control" laws, otherwise
law-abiding Germans have engaged in smuggling guns into Germany
from other European states such as France and Belgium, where
their purchases are legal, and only a personal ID card is required.
Some 14,000 firearms were seized in 1993, according to the German
Federal Crime Office, and the French and Belgian governments are now
reporting gun purchases by German citizens back to law enforcement
in Germany. Not all guns in Germany come from other countries,
however. Some guns were sold to eastern German civilians by
departing Soviet troops!
The ownership and purchase of firearms is very tightly controlled in
Germany, and there is total firearms registration and licensing in
place. Pepper spray is also prohibited in Germany, because of a
bureaucratic foul-up. There is a constitutional requirement for
military service in Germany for German men over age 18 (though
it_is_commonplace to opt out of the Army through_Zivildienst,_or
"civilian duty," which is like conscientious objector status, but
one still must do another type of government job instead). What
it amounts to is that if you're not in the armed forces or police,
the government doesn't trust you with a firearm (at least not
without an extensive investigation and a government-issued license).
Gun owners must be licensed, and this requires a full background check,
which can take several months. The background check is run through
a central records office in Berlin. Once the background check is
completed, and approval is for a license is granted, the license,
called a_Waffenbesitzkarte,_or "weapon-holder's card," is issued.
There are four types of licenses, a pink one issued to collectors,
a yellow one issued to sport-shooters, a green one issued to hunters,
and another kind which is granted only to people who are considered
to be in "concrete danger," such as security guards, or (rarely) if
the licensing office thinks you have demonstrated "need". The license
serves as a "ration card" for recording firearms purchases, and as
evidence that the buyer has passed the background check. The pink
"collector's licenses" for antique guns are very expensive, and are
nearly impossible for the average German to obtain. Collectors are
not permitted to buy ammunition for the guns in their collection,
or shoot the guns in their collection (where's the fun in that?),
so they're mainly for museum-type collections. People who've acquired
guns by inheritance are also prohibited from buying ammunition for
them unless they get a proper permit to do so. The most common types
of licenses are those for hunters and sport-shooters, but as a sport-
shooter, you must get permission from your shooting club to purchase
certain types of guns, and the club makes a notation on your card
if they think you ought to qualify for the gun. Hunting is primarily
a rich man's sport in Germany, since you must pay the landowner for
the right to hunt (~$1,500-$6,000), and essentially this means that
hunters will often form hunting clubs in order to split the costs.
Sport-shooting is also a fairly expensive hobby since there is less
of a market for guns and ammo in Germany, given the restrictions.
Obtaining a hunter's or sport-shooter's license costs about 82 DM.
Sport-shooters are permitted an unlimited number of single-shot rifles
and/or shotguns, but only two handguns. Only with special permission
from a shooting club can a sport-shooter get a multi-shot rifle or
shotgun. Semi-automatic long guns with a magazine capacity greater
than 2 rounds are permitted only to hunters. After purchasing a gun,
it must be registered within two weeks, and the registration fee is
15 DM per gun. Most applicants for the_Jagdschein_[hunter's license]
take courses to prepare for the test which is involved, and the test
costs 200 DM. Licensed hunters are allowed an unlimited number of
rifles and/or shotguns, but only two handguns. Hunters have 4 weeks
to register new long guns. Sport-shooting licensees are only
permitted to buy ammunition for handguns or sporting rifles and
shotguns in calibers they actually own, but licensed hunters are
allowed to purchase any caliber ammunition for long guns. Owning
machineguns or other military weapons is prohibited to German
civilians. The major civilian shooting sports organization in
Germany is the_Deutsche Schutzenbund_[German Shooter's League].
While Germans may have highly restrictive laws on firearms, there
are no speed limits on the autobahnen (highways), and proposals to
impose speed limits have met with the type of passionate opposition
that "gun control" laws face in the U.S.! Evidently the speed
limiters in Germany have yet to convincingly wield the gun banner's
slogan: "If it saves only one life..."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
German information updated with the valuable assistance of
Andreas Miehe (andreas@RKBAbahamas.ipp.tu-clausthal.de)
AUSTRALIA
Police are organized on the state level, and there is a healthy distrust
of authority in Australia, in some sense extending back to its 1788
founding as a British penal colony. Nevertheless, Aussie police are
professional and effective, and criminals typically serve longer
sentences sooner in Australia than is the case in the United States.
Police are forbidden by law to search without warrants, but like other
Commonwealth nations, and Britain itself, there is no Australian
equivalent to the U.S. Bill of Rights, except for a constitutional
prohibition against establishment of an official religion. Voting
is_compulsory_for Australians over age 18, and those who don't
exercise their civic duty in this way can be (and are) fined!
In Australia, the "gun control" battle centers on long guns, as handguns
have been tightly restricted along the lines of Canada's "need" based
licensing system for some time. Handgun hunting is illegal, and those
Australians who wish to own handguns must be part of a target shooting
club, or must own the gun for some job-related reason. Self-defence
is not considered a legitimate reason for owning a pistol, and as in
Canada, non-lethal defensive sprays like tear gas and pepper spray are
prohibited. Nonetheless, a number of Australians keep their pistols
ostensibly registered for "target shooting" around for home and self-
defence. Criminals, of course, can still get handguns, but Aussie
criminals have frequently substituted deadlier and more easily
accessible long guns. As a result of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre
and other highly publicised shootings, the Australian government has
implemented uniform British-style "gun control" over the entire
country. However, because the national government in Canberra has
no constitutional authority over gun laws, the new laws had to be
passed in the state legislatures. Previously, gun laws varied from
state to state, with the most controls in Victoria (where semi-auto
rifles were banned to all but sport shooters with a special hard-to-get
licence), and the least in Tasmania (which until 1993 was the only
Aussie state to permit private ownership of machineguns, which had
been banned to civilians in the rest of country since the 1920s).
Semi-automatics had been legally available only in Queensland, South
Australia, and in Tasmania.
Under the legislation recently adopted, Australia has banned all
automatic, semi-automatic and pump-action long guns for civilians
(along the lines of the Victoria system), and has implemented a
complete national gun registration system over what remains (only
single-shot long guns are permitted to ordinary Australians, though
semi-automatic pistols for target shooters are still legal), along
with a uniform system of reciprocal licensing of gun owners. There
is now a nationwide 28-day waiting period between permit and purchase,
and a mandatory training requirement for gun owners. Gun owners are
required to own a steel safe, and keep ammunition and weapons stored
seperately. The passage of the Aussie gun ban laws, championed by
John Howard's Liberal Party, spawned the largest gun import spree
in Aussie history, as Australians tried to cash in on the government's
A$500 million "buy back"-style confiscation programme. More than
640,000 guns of all kinds were turned in for "fair market value"
payments between October 1 and September 30, 1997, with an estimated
total value of A$314 million. (The state governments are now wrangling
over how best to spend the "surplus" gun confiscation funds.) Those
Aussies who chose instead to bury their guns (which has happened in
some states) face a A$20,000 fine and as much as four years in jail
if discovered. Many shooters who turned in guns are believed to have
spent the money they recieved to buy additional legal guns, according
to press reports. Prior to the adoption of the ban laws, 70,000
pro-gun protesters marched in Melbourne, believed to be the largest
such public demonstration on Australian soil since the Vietnam War.
Australia's experiment in strict "gun control" will be an interesting
sociopolitical and criminological laboratory in coming years, whatever
the result.
Australian gun owners must obtain a licence, which requires a background
check, and the completion of training classes. Licensees must show
"need" at application, such as proof of membership in a shooting club,
or permission to hunt from a landowner. Australia's gun owners have
organized politically to oppose "gun control" (with limited success),
and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia has obtained some
organizational assistance from the U.S. National Rifle Association's
Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The latest on Australia's "gun control" struggle can be found on
the SSAA's website at http://www.ssaa.org.au/
APPENDIX IV.
Washington, D.C.: a "gun control" paradise
Absolute numbers of murders and homicides in the District of Columbia,
as well as population-adjusted rates of murder and homicide during
the years 1957-1994, including those years studied by Loftin, et al.
Sources:
_Uniform Crime Reports_ for the United States, 19xx-1994,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Dept. of Justice,
SuDoc# J 1.14/7:9xx
_Vital Statistics of the United States, 19xx-1991, Vol. II -
Mortality Part B, National Center for Health Statistics,
U.S. Public Health Service, SuDoc# HE 20.6210:9xx/v.2/pt.B
_Statistical Abstract of the United States 19xx-1994,
Bureau of the Census, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, SuDoc# C 3.134:9xx
Pop(100K) = population estimates (D.C. only, excluding non-D.C.
Metropolitan Statistical Area) and census figures for years
ending in zero, in hundred thousands
MNNM = murder/non-negligent manslaughter
Homicide = Total homicides (including justifiable homicides
and homicides due to "legal intervention" by the police)
MNNM/100K and Hom(icide)/100K are population-adjusted figures
(annual rates per 100,000 population)
* (US)MNNM/100K reflects the population-adjusted MNNM figures
for the entire United States (annual rates per 100,000 population),
_excluding_the population and MNNM of the District of Columbia
Formula:
(US)MNNM/100K = ((usMNNM - dcMNNM) / (usPop - dcPop)) * 100,000
n.a. = not available
LAW = 1976, the year in which D.C.'s Firearms Control Regulations Act
became law (see 3.0.b)
WASHINGTON, D.C.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Year Pop(100K) MNNM Hom MNNM/100K Hom/100K (US)MNNM*/100K
1957 7.63 78 68 10.2 8.9 4.7
1958 7.57 74 n.a. 9.8 n.a. 4.7
1959 7.61 74 75 9.7 9.9 4.8
1960 7.63956 81 88 10.6 11.5 5.1
1961 7.75 88 89 11.4 11.5 4.8
1962 7.8 91 99 11.7 12.7 4.6
1963 7.95 95 88 12.0 11.1 4.6
1964 7.98 132 117 16.5 <uptrn 14.7 upturn> 4.9
1965 7.97 148 122 18.6 15.3 5.1
1966 7.91 141 133 17.8 16.8 5.6
1967 7.91 178 174 22.5 22.0 6.1
1968 7.78 195 157 25.1 20.2 6.9
1969 7.62 287 243 37.7 31.9 7.2
1970 7.56570 221 200 29.2 26.4 7.8
1971 7.58 275 263 36.3 34.7 8.5
1972 7.52 245 252 32.6 33.5 8.9
1973 7.37 268 260 36.4 35.3 9.3
1974 7.23 277 275 38.3 <high 38.0 high> 9.7
1975 7.12 235 242 33.0 34.0 9.6
1976 7.0 -- 188 -- 202 LAW 26.9 <low-- 28.9 -- low> 8.7
1977 6.85 192 187 28.0 27.3 8.8
1978 6.71 189 172 28.2 25.6 8.9
1979 6.56 180 184 27.4 28.1 9.7
1980 6.35233 200 175 31.5 27.6 high> 10.2
1981 6.36 223 223 35.1 <high 35.1 9.8
1982 6.31 194 213 30.7 33.8 9.0
1983 6.23 183 163 29.4 26.2 8.2
1984 6.23 175 167 28.1 26.8 7.9
1985 6.26 147 146 23.5 <low 23.3 low> 7.9
1986 6.26 194 176 31.0 28.1 8.5
1987 6.22 225 210 36.2 33.8 8.2
1988 6.2 369 308 59.5 <uptrn 49.7 upturn> 8.3
1989 6.04 434 360 71.9 59.6 8.5
1990 6.069 472 403 77.9 66.5 9.3
1991 5.98 482 417 80.6 <high 69.7 high> 9.6
1992 5.89 443 389 75.2 66.0 9.2
1993 5.78 454 n.a. 78.6 n.a. 9.4
1994 5.70 399 n.a. 70.0 n.a. 8.8
1995 5.54 360 n.a. 65.0 n.a. 8.1
Analysis: Hom(icide) represents the same source that Loftin, et al.
used, although they had the raw data broken down by months, not years,
and used the firearm-related homicides, not total homicides. They
also did not correct for the gradual decline in D.C.'s population
which began at about the same time as MNNM began to increase sharply
in D.C. during the late 1960s.
As can be seen from the data above, the D.C. MNNM stats are an
exaggeration of the national trend. Attributing the slight decline
in homicides which occurred during 1976-1979 to the enactment of
the D.C. "gun control" law is somewhat doubtful, especially because
the decline had already begun in 1976, and for most of that year,
the law wasn't in effect. If there was actually any such decline,
it was unquestionably short-lived.
Loftin, et al. were fortunate that their study concluded in 1987,
before the NCHS numbers illustrating D.C.'s skyrocketing homicide
rate would have been available. The FBI's UCR numbers, which would
be available sooner, told a shocking story even as Loftin, et al.
were going to press. (Note also the vast differences between the
total homicide numbers as reported by the National Center for Health
Statistics and the MNNM numbers reported by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation during the 1988-1991 period! People were evidently
getting killed so fast that the doctors lost count...)
APPENDIX V.
The U.S. Supreme Court and the Second Amendment
The U.S. Supreme Court, for most of its history, has had no
controversies brought before it dealing with the meaning of the
Second Amendment. Until the twentieth century, there were no "gun
control" laws at the federal level, and the state militias were
controlled at the state level, by the governors. As a result, the
history of Second Amendment jurisprudence by the U.S. Supreme Court
begins with Reconstruction, and the infringement of the civil rights
of black Americans, especially the emancipated slaves, by governments
of the former Confederacy, and by extralegal private racist groups
like the White League and the Ku Klux Klan. The decision of the
high court in the case of_U.S. v. Cruikshank_helped form the legal
foundation for official disregard of the Fourteenth Amendment,
and kept black Americans in a condition between slavery and freedom
for a century after Emancipation.
1875: _The United States vs. William J. Cruikshank, et al._
U.S. Reports v.92 pp.542, Lawyer's Edition v.23 p.588
Appellees in this case were indicted on June 16th, 1873 under
the Enforcement Act of 1870 on thirty-two counts, including "an
intent to hinder and prevent the exercise" by "two citizens of
the United States, 'of African descent and persons of color'"
of 'the right to keep and bear arms for a lawful purpose'".
Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite wrote for the majority that
"The right... specified" in the indictment "is that of 'bearing
arms for a lawful purpose.' This is not a right granted by the
Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that
instrument for its existence." The Second Amendment, Waite wrote,
"declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been
seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.
This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to
restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people
to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow
citizens of the rights it recognizes" to the police powers of
the states and localities. [p. 553]
From this statement we see that the Court's view of the Second
Amendment in_Cruikshank_was that it is an individual right, capable
of being infringed upon by one's "fellow citizens," but that the
Second Amendment only protects against infringement of that right
by the federal government. The right to keep and bear arms, the
Court said, pre-dates the Constitution, and "is not dependent upon
that instrument for its existence."
A decade passed before the high court again addressed the issue
of the Second Amendment.
1886: _Herman Presser vs. The State of Illinois_
U.S. Reports v.116 p.252, Supreme Court Reports v.6 p.580,
Lawyer's Edition v.29 p.615
Apellee in this case was indicted on September 24, 1879 for
violating an Illinois state law which prohibited "any body of
men whatever, other than the regular organized volunteer militia
of this State, and the troops of the United States, to associate
themselves together as a military company or organization, or to
drill or parade with arms in any city, or town, of this State,
without the license of the Governor thereof..."
Justice William B Woods, writing for the majority, addressed
apellees' argument that the Illinois statute violated the Second
Amendment: "We think it clear that the sections under consideration,
which only forbid bodies of men to associate together as military
organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in cities and towns
unless authorized by law, do not infringe the right of the people
to keep and bear arms. But a conclusive answer to the contention
that this amendment prohibits the legislation in question lies in
the fact that the amendment is a limitation only upon the power
of Congress and the National government, and not upon that of the
States." Woods went on to cite the_Cruikshank_decision, among
others, as precedent. "It is undoubtedly true" Woods continued,
"that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved
military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as
of the States, and in view of this prerogative of the general
government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot,
even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view,
prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive
the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the
public security, and disable the people from performing their
duty to the general government." [pp. 264-265]
Thus, according to the Supreme Court in_Presser,_states may
restrict private military organizations without violating the
right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Court in_Presser_
repeated their argument from_Cruikshank_that the Second Amendment
is only a limitation on the power of the Federal government, and
not the states. However, the majority speculated that the Federal
government's power over the state militia prohibited state laws
which disarmed ordinary citizens of the means to carry out their
militia duties.
If the Second Amendment only serves to protect the right of
the people to keep and bear arms against the depredations of
the Federal government, what of the constitutionality of federal
"gun control" laws? The National Firearms Act of 1934 was passed
to restrict the availability of "gangster weapons" like machineguns
and sawed-off shotguns, and just a few years later, the Court heard
the appeal of the United States resulting from a dismissed indictment
under the Act, which was the first major "gun control" law at the
federal level.
1939: _The United States vs. Jack Miller, et al._
U.S. Reports v.307 p.174, Supreme Court Reports v.59 p.816,
Lawyer's Edition v.83 p.1206
The U.S. District Court of the Western District of Arkansas,
on January 3, 1939 dismissed the indictment of Jack Miller and Frank
Layton under the National Firearms Act, declaring in part that the Act
"offends the inhibition of the Second Amendment to the Constitution".
Miller and Layton had been indicted for transporting a short-barreled
shotgun from Claremore, OK to Siloam Springs, AR without registering
the weapon and obtaining the $200 transfer tax stamp as required by law.
The United States appealed the U.S. District Court's decision directly
to the Supreme Court because the constitutionality of the law was
at issue.
The Supreme Court heard only the government's side of the case,
since Miller and Layton were not represented before the Court. In
the majority opinion, Justice James C. McReynolds wrote: "In the
absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of
a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length'
at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation
or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the
Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an
instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this
weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its
use could contribute to the common defense." [p. 178] McReynolds
cited _Aymette v. State,_Tennessee Reports v.21 (2 Humphreys) p.154
(1840) which defined "arms" as "the ordinary military equipment."
Consequently, the Supreme Court reversed the District Court's
decision, and reinstated the indictment.
The Second Amendment, wrote McReynolds, had the "obvious purpose
to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness"
of the militia, and "[i]t must be interpreted with that end in view."
The militia, "comprised all males physically capable of acting in
concert for the common defense... And further, that ordinarily when
called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms
supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."
McReynolds also noted that "[m]ost if not all of the states have
adopted provisions touching the right to keep and bear arms." [p. 182]
The Court in_Miller_did not make an issue of the defendants'
status as members of the militia, but rather focused on the
applicability of a short-barreled shotgun for militia use, and
particularly whether the statute in question, which taxed "gangster
weapons," was an unconstitutional extension of federal power, as the
lower court had contended. "In the absence of evidence" having been
presented that such a weapon was "part of the ordinary military
equipment," the court was compelled "at this time" not to draw any
conclusions. The Court again implied that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right against the infringement of federal
power, but the Court was willing to give the government the benefit
of the doubt in this case. The Court's recognition of_Aymette_is
particularly interesting, since it implies that "arms" in the
wording of the Second Amendment means "the ordinary military
equipment," and that the ownership of military-type weapons is
particularly well protected under the Amendment. The Court's
reference to the state constitutional guarantees of the right to
keep and bear arms is also interesting, since it implies some
equivalence between the right protected under the Second Amendment,
and the right protected by the similar state provisions, something
that cannot be reconciled with the idea that the Second Amendment
recognizes a right of the state militias not to be disarmed. The
militia, as McReynolds points out, comprises_at least_"all males
physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense,"
and the definition of "the people" in the Bill of Rights is today
even broader.
With rising violent crime rates since the 1960s, more and more
federal "gun control" laws have been added to the books, but no
cases have yet reached the Supreme Court to challenge these laws
on a Second Amendment basis. A number of Second Amendment appeals
have be denied by the high court, allowing some poorly researched
lower court decisions to stand, and these form the foundation of
many lower court decisions construing the Second Amendment as
protecting only a right of the state militias. The most prominent
examples are: _Tot vs. United States,_Federal Reports 2nd series
v.131 p.261 (1942), and_Cases v. United States,_Federal Reports 2nd
series v.131 p.916 (1942). Dicta (commentary) in some recent
Supreme Court decisions gives insight into the Court's contemporary
view of the Second Amendment, and though these cases do not have
any substantive weight in the Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence,
such statements may be worthwhile to refer to.
1980: _Lewis vs. United States_
Supreme Court Reports v.100 p.915, United States Reports v.445 p.55,
Lawyer's Edition 2nd series v.63 p.798
_Lewis_concerned an appeal of a weapons conviction under the
1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act by a previously
convicted felon who was not represented by counsel at the
earlier trial. As a footnote, Justice Harry Blackmun volunteered
that "[t]hese legislative restrictions on the use of firearms
are neither based upon constitutionally suspect criteria, nor
do they trench upon any constitutionally protected liberties."
[p. 65] Blackmun cited_Miller,_as well as several lower court
cases upholding various parts of the 1968 law. Of course, the
fact that a felon may be deprived of the right to keep and bear
arms (as a result of due process of law) has no bearing on whether
an ordinary citizen has a right to keep and bear arms which must
be respected by government.
1990: _Perpich vs. Department of Defense_
Supreme Court Reports v.110 p.2418, United States Reports v.496 p.334,
Lawyer's Edition 2nd series v.110 p.312
Governor Rudy Perpich of Minnesota sued to prevent the state's
National Guard units from being federalized and sent out of the
United States to train in Central America in 1987. The opinion
of the Court, delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens, noted that
the Federal Government retains supremacy over the states "in the
area of military affairs. The Federal Government provides virtually
all of the funding, the materiel, and the leadership for the State
Guard units. The Minnesota unit, which includes about 13,000
members, is affected only slightly when a few dozen, or at most
a few hundred, soldiers are ordered into active service for brief
periods of time." Congress, the Court said, has provided that if
a federal mission were to interfere with the Guard's response to
local emergencies, the Governor could veto the proposed mission.
Additionally, as long as there is a provision in the law for a
state to maintain its own defense force at its own expense,
"there is no basis for an argument" that the present militia
system deprives a state of having its own militia. [p.328-329]
1990: _United States vs. Verdugo-Urquidez_
Supreme Court Reports v.110 p.1056, United States Reports v.494 p.259,
Lawyer's Edition 2nd series v.108 p.222
The appellee was a Mexican citizen who attempted to argue that
the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and
seizures apply to seizures of foreign-owned property by U.S. agents
operating in a foreign country. Chief Justice William Rehnquist,
in writing for the majority, described "the people" in the Fourth
Amendment as "a term of art" used in the text of the Constitution
(as in the Second Amendment) to refer to "a class of persons who
are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed
sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of
that community." [p.232-233] The basis of the appeal was rejected,
since at the time of the search, the appellee "was a citizen and
resident of Mexico with no voluntary attachment to the United States,
and the place searched was in Mexico." [p.239]
1997: _Printz vs. United States_
Supreme Court Reports v.117 p.2365, United States Reports v.___ p.___,
Lawyer's Edition 2nd series v.138 p.914
Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in this case, which
found unconstitutional the federal mandate for local law enforcement
officers to perform Brady Act background checks, contains some hints
about the kind of cases the Court, or at least Justice Thomas, expects
in the future. In an extensive aside, Thomas observes that, like the
First Amendment, "[t]he Second Amendment similarly appears to contain
an express limitation on the government's authority." The Court, he
writes, "has not had recent occasion to consider the nature of the
substantive right safeguarded by the Second Amendment. If, however,
the Second Amendment is read to confer a personal right to 'keep and
bear arms,' a colorable argument exists that the Federal Government's
regulatory scheme, at least as it pertains to the purely intrastate
sale or possession of firearms, runs afoul of that Amendment's
protections. Perhaps, at some future date, this Court will have the
opportunity to determine whether Justice Story was correct when he
wrote that the right to bear arms 'has justly been considered, as the
palladium of the liberties of a republic.'"
APPENDIX VI.
"Pious Frauds: Or, If It Sounds Too Good To Be True..."
In the Middle Ages, it seems that every church had a splinter
of the True Cross, or a piece of cloth supposedly from the burial
shroud of Jesus. While some of these were honest mistakes (and maybe
one of those splinters was what it was claimed to be), a great many
of the holy artifacts the peasants came to see were what we now call
"pious frauds," manufactured relics made with the expectation that
people would believe them to be real. It was easy for some monks and
priests to justify this dishonesty, because they made it easier for
the peasants to believe. Along with an enormous amount of good,
well-researched evidence on the pro-RKBA side, there exist several
items, mostly "quotations," which are popular, but in fact are
"pious frauds." Whoever first put these items into circulation
must have known that they were false, but figured it would "help
the cause". It doesn't. Neither does spreading them around today.
To help combat the spread of bad information, and prevent pro-gun
authors and speakers from looking foolish when somone catches them
with one of these apocryphal references, the texts of the most common
ones are analyzed below:
The "Liberty Teeth" Speech by "George Washington"
--
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself.
They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under
independence. The church, the plow, the prarie wagon, and
citizen's firearms are indelibly related. From the hour the
Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and
tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness,
the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable. Every corner
of this land knows firearms, and more than 99 99/100 percent of
them by their silence indicate they are in safe and sane hands.
The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains
evil interference; they deserve a place with all that's good.
When firearms, go all goes; we need them every hour."
--falsely attributed to George Washington, address to the
second session of the first U.S. Congress
This quotation, sometimes called the "liberty teeth" quote,
appears nowhere in Washington's papers or speeches, and contains
several historical anachronisms: the reference to "prarie wagon"
in an America which had yet to even begin settling the Great Plains
(which were owned by France at the time), the reference to "the
Pilgrims" which implies a modern historical perspective, and
particularly the attempt by "Washington" to defend the utility
of firearms (by_use_of_statistics!) to an audience which would
have used firearms in their daily lives to obtain food, defend
against hostile Indians, and which had only recently won a war
for independence. The "99 99/100 percent" is also an odd phrase
for 18th century America, which tended not to use fractional
percentages. It's clear that "Washington" is addressing "gun
control" arguments which wouldn't exist for another couple
of centuries, not to mention doing so in a style that is
uncharacteristic of the period, and uncharacteristic of
Washington's addresses to Congress, both of which exhibited a
high degree of formality. This is a false quote, but bits and
pieces of it still continue to crop up from time to time.
Most recently, this quote has been seen circulated on flyers
at gun shows attributed to Neil Knox's Firearms Coalition,
but Knox isn't the original source of this "speech," and even
national publications, such as_Playboy_magazine, have been
snared by it. (_Playboy_published the "quote" in December 1995
as part of an article entitled "Once and for All: What the
Founding Fathers Said About Guns". After consulting with an
assistant editor of the George Washington Papers at the University
of Virginia,_Playboy_published a lengthy correction in March 1996.)
The "Hitler" Quote That Wouldn't Die: "1935 Will Go Down In History!"
--
"This year* will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized
nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our
police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the
future!"
--falsely attributed to Adolf Hitler, "Abschied vom Hessenland!"
["Farewell to Hessia!"], ['Berlin Daily' (Loose English Translation)],
April 15th, 1935, Page 3 Article 2, Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann
[Introduction by Eberhard Beckmann]
This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all,
suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant
of which is that the date given (*in alternate versions, the
words "This year..." are replaced by "1935...") has no correlation
with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration,
nor would there have been a need for the Nazis to pass such a
law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government
were already in effect. The Nazi Weapons Law (or_Waffengesetz_)
which further restricted the possession of militarily useful
weapons and forbade trade in weapons without a government-issued
license was passed on March 18, 1938.
The citation usually given for this quote is a jumbled mess,
and has only three major clues from which to work. The first is
the date, which does not correspond (even approximately) to a date
on which Hitler made a public speech, and a check of the texts of
Hitler's speeches does not reveal a quotation resembling this
(which is easily understandable when you realize that "Hitler"
is commenting on a non-existent law). The second clue is the
newspaper reference, which if translated into German resembles the
title of a newspaper called _Berliner Tageblatt,_ and a check of
the issue for that date reveals that the page and column references
given are to the arts and culture page! No Hitler speech appears
in the pages of _Berliner Tageblatt_ on that date, or dates close
to it, because there was no such speech to report. Finally,
the citation includes a proper name "Eberhard Beckmann," which
is sometimes cited as "by Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann,"
which is an important clue itself, because it reveals that the
citation was fabricated by someone who had so little knowledge of
the German language that they were unaware that "Einleitung"
isn't the fellow's first name! The only "Eberhard Beckmann"
which has been uncovered thus far did indeed write introductions,
but he was a journalist for a German broadcasting company after
WWII, and he wrote several introductions to_photography books,_
one of which was photos of the German state of Hesse (or Hessia),
which may be the source of the curious phrase "Abschied vom
Hessenland!" which appears in the citation. This quotation,
however effective it may be as propaganda, is a fraud.
The "B'nai B'rith" speech by "Janet Reno"
--
"The most effective means of fighting crime in the United
States is to outlaw the possession of any type of firearm by
the civilian populace."
--falsely attributed to Janet Reno, then-state attorney for Dade
County, speech to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida B'nai B'rith gathering,
ca.1991
This supposed "quote" first got national attention when it
appeared in the April 1995 issue of _Soldier of Fortune,_ as
part of an article by Mike Williams entitled "Citizen Militias:
'...Necessary to the Security of a Free State...'" and was picked
up by the New York Times Syndicate as part of their coverage of
the militia movement in the wake of the bombing in Oklahoma City.
According to editorials by Martin Dyckman, published in the _St.
Petersburg Times_ May 2 and May 28, 1995, the "quote" appears to
have originated with an affidavit written by Fred Diamond of Miami,
FL who claimed to have heard Reno speak in Coral Gables (not Fort
Lauderdale) "on or about November 1, 1984". According to Diamond's
affidavit, "Janet Reno told the members of our group assembled, that
waiting periods were only a step, that registration was only a step,
and further that the prohibition of the private ownership of firearms
was the only ultimate solution to controlling crime. I was shocked and
appalled to hear her, an elected public official sworn to uphold and
defend the Constitution, espouse and advocate a position that would
effectively repeal the guarantees of the Second Amendment."
Early in 1991, after Reno was nominated to be Attorney General,
Diamond talked to Marion Hammer, then the National Rifle Association's
Florida lobbyist, and NRA sent him affidavits to sign. Diamond says
he rejected their first draft. Subsequently, Hammer's newsletter,
_Florida Firing Line,_ published an article on Reno in March 1991,
including almost word for word the key passage from Diamond's
affidavit about what Reno allegedly said, but the newsletter put
the speech in 1991, not 1984. (Reno would thus had to have made
the comments in January or February of that same year!) Diamond
didn't sign the affidavit (with the correct year) until June 17,
1991, after Reno had already been confirmed. Reno has been questioned
about the "quote" and denies having said it, either in 1991 or 1984.
A spokesman for the Justice Department, Bert Brandenburg, told the New
York Times syndicate: "The assertion is untrue and the attorney general
has never made such a statement" (Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 2, 1995).
The Reno "quote" has appeared in print elsewhere, including_National
Review_ on May 29, 1995 as part of an article by Alan W. Bock about
the militia movement; and was reprinted in a_Guns and Ammo_editorial
by Ed Moats on concealed carry in October of 1996.
The "Socialist America" quote from "Sarah Brady"
--
"Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed
when those who would resist us are totally disarmed."
--falsely (hilariously?) attributed to Sarah Brady of Handgun
Control, Inc. supposedly in _The American Educator,_ published by
the American Federation of Teachers (or alternatively, attributed
to a speech to AARP, late 1991)
This bit of dialogue is reminiscent of a bad movie, and even
if Sarah Brady really were bent on fighting for international
socialism, she's not quite stupid enough to say so out loud!
Even Lyndon LaRouche couldn't believe_this_conspiracy...
"Jim 'the Bear' Brady has (or had) a Class III FFL!"
--
This falls more into the category of an "urban legend" than
an actual quote, and most likely resulted from a case of mistaken
identity. If Sarah, who's a conservative Republican in most other
respects (aside from her fetish for gun control), can have a secret
double life as a closet Communist, can we then suppose that poor
"gun victim" Jim can "rock-and-roll" with his machinegun habit?
Can we imagine him at Jay Rockefeller's range wearing a "Happiness
Is a Belt-Fed Weapon" T-shirt, as the Norinco brass mounds up in the
spokes of his wheelchair? Not bloody likely. Republican senatorial
candidate Al Salvi of Illinois found out the hard way in October of
1996 how not checking one's facts before opening one's mouth can cost
you. In an interview with WBBM news radio in Chicago during the last
week of the campaign, Salvi clumsily attempted to refute the claim
that machineguns were already illegal in the United States: "In fact
Jim Brady himself used to deal --there are people with-- machine guns.
There are people with licenses to sell machineguns and automatic
weapons." Worse yet, Salvi stepped in it again at a fundraiser
soon afterwards: "Jim Brady was a licensed machinegun dealer before
he was shot." Salvi apologized publicly and retracted the statements,
but it couldn't save his shredded credibility. There's obviously
more than one James Brady in the world, and in BATF's record books.
---
"Pious Frauds" adapted in part from "Firing Back" by Clayton Cramer
(clayton_cramer@RKBAdlcc.com), pp.48-52. Used by permission of the
author, who has a homepage at http://cs.sonoma.edu/~cramerc .]
---
INDEX AND GLOSSARY
Adams, John (U.S. President, Vice-President to President Washington)
2.0.a
Afghanistan
Soviet occupation of (1979-1989), 4.0
"Air Taser" -- see stun "guns"
"Assault Weapons" -- see Guns
Amar, Akhil (law professor, Yale University), 2.1
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), Appendix VI.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [U.S.], 1.1.a, Appendix I.
American Federation of Teachers, Appendix VI.
American Indian nations [U.S.]
genocide of, 4.0
American Revolution, 4.0
American Society for Criminology (ASC)
Hindelang Award for_Point Blank_by Gary Kleck, 1.1
Comparative Criminology award for_The Samurai, The Mountie
And The Cowboy,_by David Kopel, Appendix III.
American Sports Shooting Council (business group, U.S.), 1.3
Ammunition
armor-piercing, 3.4, 3.4.a, Appendix I.
Black Talon, 3.4.a
"Black Rhino," 3.4.a, 3.6
pre-fragmented, 3.4.a
Glaser Safety Slug, 3.4.a
hollowpoint, 3.4.a, 4.0
"Razor Ammo" (formerly "Rhino Ammo"), 3.4.a
"Rhino," 3.4.a
Anderson, Jack (journalist, author), 3.6
AP [armor piercing, also Associated Press]
Asprey, Robert (author), 4.0
Atlanta, GA
Centennial Olympic Park bombing, 3.0.c
AW ["assault weapon(s)"]
Australia
Sport Shooters Association of Australia, Appendix III.
automatic [in common use this can mean either semi-automatic
or full(y)-auto(matic), i.e. a machinegun. Fully
automatic weapons continue to fire as long as the
trigger is held down, until the magazine is empty.
Full-auto weapons have been taxed and restricted
in the U.S. since 1934 by the National Firearms Act.]
Ayoob, Massad (firearms instructor), 1.0, 1.1.a
Barnes, Ken (author of this FAQ) Email: kebarnes@cc.memphis.edu
[Mr. Barnes is also the author of the 'Hit' List music
FAQ on alt.fan.rush-limbaugh. He is a microbiologist.]
BATF -- see Treasury Dept.
Beccaria, Cesare (Italian criminologist, nobleman), 3.8
Beckmann, Eberhard (German broadcaster), Appendix VI.
Bill of Rights [U.S.] -- see Law
Biocode, Inc., 3.0.c
Black, Phillip (Florida highway patrolman), 3.4
Blackmun, Harry (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Appendix V.
"Black Rhino" -- see ammunition
Blackstone, Sir William (English jurist, author), 2.0, 2.0.a
Blair, Tony (British prime minister), Appendix III.
B'nai B'rith (Jewish fraternal organization), Appendix VI.
Bock, Alan W. (), Appendix VI.
BoR ["Bill of Rights"]
Bordua, David (sociologist, University of Illinois), 1.0
Bovard, James (journalist, author), 2.3, 3.0
Brady Act, 3.2, 3.2.a, Appendix I.
Brady, Jim (press secretary to President Reagan), 3.2, Appendix VI.
Brady, Sarah (chairwoman, Handgun Control, Inc.), Appendix VI.
Brandenburg, Bert (U.S. Justice Department Spokesman), Appendix VI.
Brown, Ron (Commerce Secretary for President Clinton), 3.3
Bullet [the part of a round of ammunition which is expelled out
the muzzle in the direction of the target when the gun
is fired. Not the same thing as a cartridge or round.]
"Bulletproof" vests -- see bullet-resistant vests
Bullet-resistant vests, 3.4, 3.4.a
C3I [Command, Control, Communications, (and) Intelligence], 4.0
Caliber [the diameter of the bullet in inches (or millimeters)
which a gun is designed for. In shotguns, the caliber
is expressed as "gauge," or the number of lead spheres
of that diameter which would make up a pound of lead.]
California Highway Patrol (CHP), 3.2
Cambodia (Kampuchea)
Khmer Rouge genocide in, 4.0
"carjacking," [armed robbery/theft of a motor vehicle], 1.1
Carter, Hodding (journalist, author), 2.3
Cartridge [a unit of ammunition, also called a round, or (primarily
among shotgunners --and artillerymen) a shell]
Case [the part of a round of ammunition which remains in the gun
(at least until ejected) when the gun is fired. The case is
usually a brass cup containing the propellant powder and a
form of primer. Spent cases are often called "brass".]
CCW ["concealed carry weapon"]
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [U.S.], 3.6
Chapman, Mark (assassin), 3.2
Chemical defense sprays, 1.1.a, 3.8.a
and animals, 1.1.a
and effectiveness, 1.1.a
and toxicity, 1.1.a
use of oven cleaner as, 1.1.a
weapons substitution and, 1.1.a
China
Communist (People's "Republic" of China), 4.0
China Jiang An (trading company), 3.3
China Northern Industries Corporation a.k.a. Norinco
(arms manufacturer), 3.3
CITIC (China Trust and Investment Corporation), 3.3
genocide in, 4.0
"People's Liberation Army," 3.3, 4.0
Poly Technologies (arms manufacturer), 3.3
pro-liberty movement in (1989), 4.0
Tien an men Square massacre (1989), 4.0
Chinard, Gilbert (professor, Princeton University), 3.8
Children and guns -- see Guns
Churchill, Winston (British prime minister), Section IV opening quote
Civil rights movement [U.S.], 2.0, 2.3
Civil War [U.S.], 2.0, 2.2, 2.3, Appendix V.
CLEO ["chief law enforcement officer"]
Clark, Ramsey (Attorney General to President Johnson), Appendix I.
Clarke, Arthur C. (author, inventor of communications satellite), 4.0
Clinton, Bill (U.S. President), Section III opening quote, 3.2.a,
3.3, 3.4, Appendix I.
Clip -- see Magazine
Colfax, (Louisiana) Massacre [U.S.], 2.3
"collective rights," 2.1
Concealed-carry reform -- see Law
Constitution, U.S. -- see Law
commerce, interstate -- see law
Commerce, U.S. Department of
Bureau of the Census
_Statistical Abstract of the United States,_ 3.0.a, 3.0.b
Cook, Phillip (criminologist, Duke University), 1.1.c
"Cop-killer" bullet -- see Police
Cottey, Talbert J. (), 3.0.b
Cottrol, Robert (law professor, Rutgers University-Camden), 1.0, 2.0,
2.1, 2.3, 3.3
Cramer, Clayton (author), 1.0, 2.0, Appendix VI.
Crime
and urban settings, 1.1
and victim selection, 3.1
"carjacking," 1.1
criminals as homicide victims, 1.1
Cruikshank, William (), 2.3
CS [orthochlorobenzal malononitrile, a tear gas, sometimes called
"chemical mace" (after "Mace," a tradename for an older, less
effective tear gas formula made by Smith and Wesson which
actually contained CN, or alphachloroacetophenone). Tear gas is
generally believed to be less effective than OC pepper spray.]
Curtis, Michael Kent (lawyer, author), 2.3
Daly, Kathleen (author), 3.5
Dawes, William (tanner, patriot), 4.0
Day, Dan (contributing author to FAQ), 2.2
Declaration of Independence (U.S.), 2.0.a
Dees, Morris (executive director, Southern Poverty Law Center), 4.0
Defense, Department of [U.S.]
Advanced Research Projects Agency, 3.6.a
Department of Justice [U.S.] -- see Justice, Department of [U.S.]
DGU ["defensive gun use"]
Diamond, Fred (insurance and pension consultant), Appendix VI.
Diamond, Raymond (law professor, Tulane University), 2.0, 2.1
2.3, 3.3
"dishonest respondent" hypothesis, 1.1.b, 1.1.c
Dodd, Thomas (U.S. Senator, D-CT), Appendix I.
Dole, Robert (former Senate majority leader, presidential
candidate, R-KS), 3.3
Dowlut, Robert (deputy general counsel, NRA), 2.3
Duckett, Lowell K. (Washington, DC police lieutenant), 3.0.b
Dunblane, Scotland
mass murder, Appendix III.
Dunlap, Jr., Col. Charles J. (U.S.A.F.), 4.0
Dvorchak, Robert (AP reporter), 3.4.a
Dyckman, Martin (journalist), Appendix VI.
Eastwood, Clint (actor, director), 3.6, Appendix I.
Elliot, Jonathan (author), Section II opening quote
Federal Firearms License (FFL), 3.0.a, Appendix I.
Feinstein, Dianne (U.S. Senator, D-CA), Section III opening quote
Ferguson, Colin (mass murderer), 3.2
"fifth auxiliary right," 2.0.a
Fischer, David H. (historian), 4.0
Fletcher, Andrew (Scottish Whig political theorist), 2.0.a
"for the common defence" voted down by U.S. Senate, 2.1
"43:1" ratio, 1.1
Franklin, Benjamin (scientist, U.S. Ambassador to France), 2.2
Gallup Poll, 1.1.b
Gauge -- see Caliber
GCA '68 [Gun Control Act of 1968, see Appendix I.]
General Accounting Office (GAO) [U.S.]
Gun Control -- Implementation of the Brady Act (report), 3.2.a
General Services Administration [U.S.]
National Archives, 2.0.a
Germany (Federal Republic)
Deutsche Shutzenbund, Appendix III.
Germany (Third Reich)
genocide in, 4.0
occupation of Poland (1939-1945), 4.0
Gertz, Marc (criminologist, Florida State University), 1.1, 1.1.b
Gibson, James William (author), 4.0
Girardet, Edward (journalist, author), 4.0
Gorbachev, Mikhail (Soviet dictator), 4.0
Grant, Ulysses S. (Union general, U.S. President), 2.3
Gray, William (contributing author to FAQ), 3.0.a
Green, Ernest G. (investment banker), 3.3
Great Britain
and U.S. Revolutionary War, 4.0
Gulag -- see Soviet Union
"Gun Control"
ammunition registration, 3.0
and censorship, 2.1
and children, 1.3
and "collective" rights, 2.1
and crime rates, 1.1.a, 3.8, Appendix II.
and effectiveness, 1.1.a, 3.0, 3.0.b, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.a, 3.3, 3.5, 3.6,
3.7, 3.8, 3.8.a, Appendix II, Appendix IV.
and elitism, 2.1
and genocide, 3.0, 3.3, 4.0
and non-lethal defense, 1.1.a, 3.8.a
and racism, 2.0, 2.3
and U.S. Revolutionary War, 4.0
as "public health" measure, 1.1
background checks, 3.0, 3.2, 3.2.a, Appendix I.
bans, 2.3, 3.0.a, 3.3, 3.4, 3.4.a, 3.5, 3.6, Appendix I.
buy-backs, 3.7
concealed carry, 3.0.a, 3.8, 3.8.a, 3.8.b, Appendix I.,
Appendix II.
gun confiscation, 3.0, 3.5, 3.7, Appendix III.
gun registration, 3.0, 3.0.b, 3.5, Appendix IV.
licensing gun owners, 3.0, 3.0.a
waiting periods, 3.0.a, 3.2, 3.2.a, Appendix I.
weapons substitution and, 1.1.a, 3.5
Gun Owners of America [U.S.]
addresses and phone numbers, 4.0
Gunpowder -- see Powder
Guns
assault rifles, 3.0, 3.3, 4.0
AK-47 (Avtomat Kalashnikov model 1947), 4.0\
Colt M16A2, 1.2.a
lethality of, 3.3
"assault weapons," 3.3, 3.5, 3.6, Appendix I.
and accidents, 1.1, 1.3, 3.0.a
and cars, 1.3, 3.0.a
and children, 1.3
and crime deterrence, 1.1, 1.1.a, 1.2, 3.8
and crime rates, 1.1, 3.0.b, 3.8, 3.8.a, Appendix II, Appendix IV.
and defensive effectiveness, 1.1, 1.1.a, 1.2, 3.1, 3.2,
3.3, 3.4.a, 3.8
and disabled, 1.2, 3.1
and drugs, 3.2, 3.5
and elderly, 1.2, 3.1
and lethality, 1.2, 3.1, 3.3, 3.5
and mentally ill, 3.2, Appendix I.
and multiple attackers, 1.1.a, 1.2, 3.1, 3.3
and physical strength, 1.2, 3.1, 3.8.a
and poor, 3.5
and safety education, 1.1, 1.3
and suicides, 1.1, 3.0.a
and women, 1.2.a, 3.8.b
as medium of exchange in illicit economy, 3.5, 3.6
concealed carry of, 1.2, 3.0.a, 3.5, 3.8, 3.8.a, Appendix I.,
Appendix II.
criminal acquisition of, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.a, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8.a
criminal preferences in, 3.5
frequency of use, generally, 1.1, 3.0, 3.0.a
frequency of use in violent crime, 1.1
frequency of use in self-defense, 1.1, 1.1.b, 1.1.c, 1.2
handguns,
Colt Government Model M1911A1 (.45 semi-auto), 3.5
Glock 17 (9mm semi-auto), 3.6, Appendix I.
Norinco "Model of the 1911A1" (.45 semi-auto), 3.3
Ruger P-89 (9mm semi-auto), 3.2
Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, 3.0.b, 3.5
"Saturday Nite Specials," 1.1.a, 3.5, 3.6
hunting rifles, 3.0.b, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, Appendix I.
machineguns, 1.1.a, 3.3, Appendix I.
number of in U.S., 3.0, Appendix I.
"plastic," 3.6, Appendix I.
retention of, 1.2
shotguns, 1.1.a, 3.0.b, 3.4, 3.5, Appendix I.
Halbrook, Stephen (lawyer, author), 2.0, 2.1, 2.3, 3.3
Hamilton, Alexander (Treasury Secretary to President Washington), 2.0,
2.0.a, 3.3, quotation 4.0
Hamilton, Peter J. (), 2.3
Hammer, Marion (first female president of NRA, first CCW license
holder under Florida's reformed 1987 CCW law), 1.3, Appendix VI.
Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) [U.S.], 3.4.a
handguns [concealable firearms designed to be held with only one hand,
they are more often used with two hands, for accuracy, and to
help minimize recoil. There are many basic designs, but the
most common are the semi-automatic pistol, the revolver,
and the derringer. Handguns are generally less deadly than
long guns, though in heavier calibers (and especially when
used with hollowpoint ammunition) they can be effective
personal defense weapons. That's why police have them.]
Harris, David A. (), 3.6.a
Harriston, Deborah (journalist), 3.0.c
Hawkins, Gordon (professor, University of California, Berkeley), 3.1
Heaviside pulse gun detector, 3.6.a
Henry, Patrick (orator, governor of Virginia), Section II opening quote
Herbert, Hilary A. (), 2.3
"Hijacker special," 3.6
Hileman, Lawrence (police informant), Appendix I.
Hinckley, Jr., John (attempted assassin), 3.2, Appendix I.
Hitler, Adolf (dictator, mass murderer, German Third Reich), Appendix VI.
Holocaust, 3.0
hollowpoint(s) [a type of ammunition utilizing a bullet with a hollow
tip, often precut or scored so as to expand to a larger
diameter within a target, and transfer more energy to
the target, rather than passing through and possibly
hitting whatever is behind the target. Hollowpoints
help increase the effectiveness of smaller calibers.
Hollowpoints do not "explode," nor are they in any way
"armor-piercing," contrary to erroneous reports by
uninformed members of the press.]
homicides, justifiable, 1.1
House of Representatives, U.S.
_Gun Laws and the Need for Self-Defense_(1995 hearings), 1.0
Howard, John (Australian prime minister), Appendix III.
Hughes, William J. (D-NJ), Appendix I.
International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1.1.a
"instant-check" system, 3.2, 3.2.a, Appendix I.
"interstate commerce" clause -- see law
"In The Line Of Fire" (motion picture), 3.6, Appendix I.
Iraq, 1.2.a
Irwin, Donald (Canadian provincial constable), 3.4
Isotag, LLC; 3.0.c
Israel, 1.2.a
Japan
Nihon Raifuru Shageki Kyokai (NRA), Appendix III.
Japanese-Americans, internment of 4.0
Jay, John (first Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court), 3.3
Jefferson, Thomas (U.S. President), 3.8, Section IV opening quote
Jewell, Richard (security guard, 1996 Atlanta Olympics), 3.0.c
Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB, or Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa)
defense of Warsaw Ghetto, 4.0
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) [U.S.]
address and phone numbers, 1.0
"Dial 911 and Die!", 1.0
"'Gun Control' Gateway to Tyranny", see Appendix I.
"Lethal Laws", 3.0, 3.3, 4.0
Johnson, Lyndon (U.S. President), Appendix I.
Justice, Department of [U.S.]
Bureau of Justice Statistics
National Crime Victimization Survey, 1.1, 1.1.b, 1.1.c
National Survey on Private Ownership and Use
of Firearms, 1.1.c
Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1.1.b
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [U.S.]
and background checks, 3.0.a, 3.2.a, 3.3, Appendix I.
Uniform Crime Reports, 3.2.a, 3.8, 3.8.a, Appendix II.,
Appendix IV.
Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 1.2, 3.4
National Institute of Justice
The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated
Felons, 3.5
Karadzic, Radovan (Bosnian Serb leader), 1.2.a
Karl, Jonathan (journalist, author), 4.0
Kates, Jr., Donald (lawyer, criminologist), 2.0, 2.1, 2.2
Keen, David (chemist), 3.4.a
Kellerman, Arthur (physician), 1.1
Kellogg, William P. (governor of Louisiana), 2.3
Kemp, Jack (former vice-presidential candidate, R-NY), 3.3
Keneally, Thomas (author), 4.0
Kennedy, Robert (U.S. presidential candidate - 1968), Appendix I.
Kleck, Gary (criminologist, Florida State University), 1.1, 1.2,
1.3, 3.0, 3.3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.8, 3.8.a, Appendix II., Appendix III.
King County, WA (U.S.), 1.1
King, Jr., Martin Luther (U.S. civil rights leader), Appendix I.
King, Rodney, (drunk driver) 1.1.a
Knox, Neil (board member, NRA), Appendix VI
Kopel, David B. (author), 2.0, Appendix III.
Korea
North ("Democratic" People's "Republic" of Korea), 4.0
Kotell, Peter (writer), 3.4.a
Ku Klux Klan (U.S.), 2.3, Appendix V.
Kurzman, Dan (author), 4.0
LaPierre, Wayne (NRA spokesman and chief executive officer)
1.3, 2.1, 3.0, 3.0.a, 3.2, 3.3, 3.5, 3.7, 3.8
Law
Case law, U.S., 1.0, 2.0, 2.3, 3.2.a, 3.3, Appendix I.
Appendix V.
Concealed-carry reform, 3.0.a, 3.8, 3.8.a, 3.8.b, Appendix II.
Constitution, of U.S. states
and RKBA, 2.3
Virginia, 2.0, 2.0.a, 2.3
Constitution, U.S.
Article I, 2.0
"interstate commerce" clause, Appendix I.
"militia clauses," 2.0.a
Article II, 2.0
Article V, 2.2
Amendment I, 2.1, 2.2
Amendment II, 2.0, 2.0.a, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.3, 4.0, Appendix I.
and military weapons, 3.3
and nuclear weapons, 2.2
application to state and local governments, 2.3
as deterrent to tyranny, 4.0
meaning of "well regulated", 2.0.a
punctuation in, 2.0.a
text of, 2.0
Amendment IV, 2.1, 3.6.a
Amendment IX, 2.1
Amendment X, 2.1, 3.2.a, Appendix I.
Amendment XIV, 2.3
and "incorporation" doctrine, 2.3
Constitution, German (Federal Republic), Appendix III.
Constitution, Soviet Union (CCCP), 2.1
Statutes, Australian
"gun control," Appendix III.
Statutes, Canadian
"gun control," Appendix III.
and OC pepper spray, 1.1.a
Statutes, German (Third Reich)
Waffengesetz [Law on Weapons] of March 18, 1938, 3.0, Appendix I.
Appendix VI.
Statutes, German (Federal Republic)
"gun control," Appendix III.
and OC pepper spray, 1.1.a, Appendix III.
Statutes, Japanese
"gun control," Appendix III.
Statutes, Switzerland
"gun control," Appendix III.
Statutes, United Kingdom
common law RKBA, 2.0
English Bill of Rights, 2.0.a
"gun control," Appendix III.
Statutes, U.S.
federal "gun control" laws, Appendix I.
Militia Act (1792), 2.0, 2.1
Enforcement Act (1870), 2.3
Title 10, 2.0
Title 32, 2.0
Statutes, U.S. state and local
"Jim Crow", 2.3
Morton Grove, IL,
handgun ban, 2.3
New York City, NY
"Assault rifle" ban, 3.0
Pasadena, CA
ammunition registration law, 3.0
Statutes, Florida
Title 46, 3.8, 3.8.a, Appendix II.
Statutes, Vermont, 3.0
Washington, D.C.
and OC pepper spray, 1.1.a
Firearms Control Regulations Act (1976), 3.0.b, Appendix IV.
Layton, Frank (), Appendix V.
Law Enforcement - see Police
LEO [law enforcement officer]
Lee, Bruce (founder of Jeet Kune Do martial art, actor), 1.2.a
Lennon, John (entertainer), 3.2
Levinson, Sanford (law professor, University of Texas), 2.1
Lexington and Concord (Mass.)
battles of (U.S. Revolutionary War), 4.0
Library of Congress [U.S.]
_The Constitution of the United States,_2.0.a
Libya, 1.2.a
Litvak, Lilya (Soviet WWII flying ace), 1.2.a
Loftin, Colin (criminologist, University of Maryland), 3.0.b, 3.8.a,
Appendix IV.
long guns [firearms like rifles and shotguns, as distinguished
from handguns - these are generally more accurate and
deadlier weapons than handguns, but less concealable]
Longstreet, James A. (Confederate general, corps commander to Gen.
Robert E. Lee, cotton-broker, adjutant general of LA militia), 2.3
Lott, John R. (economist, University of Chicago Law School), 3.8.b
Ludwig, Jens (criminologist, Georgetown University), 1.1.c
Machine guns -- see Guns
Magazine [the part of a firearm, often detachable, which holds
ammunition and feeds it into the gun via a spring
mechanism. Sometimes (incorrectly) called a clip.
Clips are pieces of metal which can be used to load
a non-detachable magazine.]
Madison, James (U.S. President), 2.1, 3.3
Malcolm, Joyce (historian, Harvard University), 1.0, 2.0
McDowall, David (criminologist, University of Maryland), 3.0.b, 3.8.a
McEnery, John D. (LA gubenatorial candidate - 1872), 2.3
(Mc)Kinney, Jesse (farmer, father of five, Grant Parish, LA), 2.3
McReynolds, James C. (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Appendix V.
Media reports
ABC-TV, 3.4.a
American Educator, Appendix VI.
American Firearms Industry, 3.4.a
Associated Press, 3.4.a, 3.8.a, 3.8.b
CBS-TV,
"Meet the Press," 3.3
"60 Minutes," Section III opening quote
CNN, "Larry King Live," 3.3
generally, 1.1.c
Guns and Ammo, Appendix VI.
Houston Post, 3.2.a
Los Angeles Times, 3.0
MTV (Music Television), "Enough is Enough," Section III
opening quote
National Review, Appendix VI.
NBC-TV, 3.4
New England Journal of Medicine, 1.1, 3.0.b
Newsweek, 3.4.a
New York Times, 3.4.a
Playboy, Appendix VI.
Soldier of Fortune, Appendix VI.
Wall Street Journal, 3.4.a
Washington Post, 3.0.b, 3.6
Metaksa, Tanya (lobbyist for NRA), 3.4.a
"militia clauses" -- see Law
Militia, [U.S.], 2.0, 2.1, 4.0
militia, negro, 2.3
Miller, Jack (), Appendix V.
Millimeter-wave imaging (MMWI), 3.6.a
Millitech, Inc., 3.6.a
Minutemen (U.S. Revolutionary War), 4.0
MNNM [from the phrase "murder/non-negligent manslaughter"
as used in the FBI's_Uniform Crime Reports_]
"more gun dealers than gas stations," 3.0.a
Morton Grove, IL, 2.3
Morton, Chris (contributing author to FAQ), 1.2.a
Moynihan, Daniel (U.S. Senator, D-NY), 3.4.a
Muhlenberg, Frederick (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
in the First Congress, U.S. Representative, Federalist-PA), 2.0.a
Mui Ng, (according to tradition, founder of Wing Chun Kung Fu), 1.2.a
Mujahedeen ["fighters of God"] militia (Afghanistan), 4.0
Mustard, David (economist, University of Chicago), 3.8.b
NFA [National Firearms Act of 1934, see Appendix I., also
weapons restricted by the act, such as machineguns,
short-barreled shotguns and rifles, and silencers]
Nash, Christopher C. (candidate for sheriff, Grant Parish, LA), 2.3
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
National Research Council
Marking, Rendering Inert and Licensing of Explosive
Materials, 3.0.c
National Guard [U.S.]
as organized militia, 2.0
National Rifle Association (NRA) [U.S.], 1.3, 3.2.a, 3.4, 3.4.a,
3.6, Appendix I.
addresses and phone numbers, 1.3
and gun safety, 1.3
"Eddie Eagle" program (K-6), 1.3
and legislation, 3.4, 3.6, Appendix I.
National Safety Council [U.S.], 1.3, 3.0.a
Nelson, Levi (Allen?) (), 2.3
Nuclear weapons, 2.2, 4.0
Nurnberg War Crimes Trials, Appendix I.
OC [oleoresin capsicum, the active ingredient in hot peppers]
Office of Technology Assessment (U.S.)
Taggants in Explosives, 3.0.c
Oklahoma City, OK bombing, 3.0.c
Okleberry, Kevin (contributing author to FAQ), 3.0.b
Olin Foundation, 3.8.b
Oven cleaner, 1.1.a
Oxford English Dictionary, 2.0
Paine, Thomas (author, revolutionary), Section I opening quote
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 1.2.a
Patriot air defense missile, 1.2.a
Pepper spray, 1.1.a
Perpich, Rudy (governor of MN), Appendix V.
Personal alarms, 1.1.a
Pinchback, Pinckney B. S. (lieutenant governor of Louisiana), 2.3
"Pious frauds," Appendix VI.
Poland
Solidarity [Solidarnosc] movement, 4.0
Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943), 4.0
Police
and armor-piercing ammunition, 3.4
and chemical defense sprays, 1.1.a
and effectiveness, 1.1
and Glock 17, 3.6
and stun guns, 1.1.a
disarmed by attacker, 1.2
killed with armor-piercing bullet, 3.4
killed with service weapon, 1.2, 3.4
responsibilities of, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 3.2, 3.7, 3.8
transition to semi-automatics as sidearm, 3.5
use of guns by, 1.1
Police Foundation (U.S.), 1.1.c
Polsby, Daniel (law professor, Northwestern University), 1.0, 3.8.a
Port Arthur, Tasmania (Australia),
mass murder, Appendix III.
Powder, propellant [Commonly called "gunpowder," or simply "powder".
In modern firearms, the traditional recipe of the ancient Chinese
(potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur) is replaced by a faster
cleaner-burning explosive, termed "smokeless powder," usually
containing nitrocellulose (also known as "guncotton"), which is
prepared by treating cellulose fibers with nitric acid. Curiously,
the Chinese used their explosive invention primarily for artistic,
ceremonial, and signaling purposes, in fireworks; but its application
by the Europeans as a weapon is generally credited by military
historians as the beginning of the end of castles and armed knights
(eventually, the end of feudalism and royalty itself). The heavy
sulfurous smoke of those battlefields is still with us each summer
in the U.S. as we celebrate our Independence Day, the 4th of July.]
Prescott, Dr. Samuel (physician, patriot), 4.0
Pratt, Larry (executive director, Gun Owners of America), 4.0
Primer [In modern firearms, a shock-sensitive chemical mixture which
when struck ignites the propellant powder in a round of
ammunition, also the small deformable metal cup containing
the priming mixture. Rimfire cartridges, such as the popular
.22 cal. long rifle, do not contain a separate primer, but
have the priming mixture cast into the deformable rim of
the brass case. Priming mixtures once commonly contained
mercury fulminate, which causes corrosion to exposed metal
surfaces, such as those inside the barrel. Modern primers
typically substitute lead salts like lead styphnate and/or
lead azide, along with an oxidizing agent like potassium
chlorate, plus other agents such as lead thiocyanate, antimony
sulfide, and ground glass or carborundum, to act as stabilizers,
fuels, sensitizers, binders, etc. There is some concern that
the lead compounds produced by the burning of the priming
mixture can result in health problems for shooters, particularly
in poorly ventilated indoor ranges, much as lead anti-"knock"
compounds in gasoline/petrol were once a source of environmental
lead exposure in air pollution. There are lead-free primers
specifically designed to minimize these problems, and which
are becoming more popular with those shooters, like police
agencies, who operate indoor ranges. As responsible gun
owners know, all the lead_should_be sent downrange!]
Prohibition (of alcohol), [U.S.], Appendix I.
Public Health Service (U.S.)
National Center for Health Statistics
_Vital Statistics of the United States,_ 3.0.b, Appendix IV.
Quadaffi, Muammar (Libyan dictator), 1.2.a, 3.6
Quakers -- see Society of Friends
Quigley, Paxton (firearms instructor, author), 1.0
Rable, George C. (), 2.3
Rafsanjani, Hashemi (Iranian executive vice-president), 1.2.a
Rand, Kristen (federal policy director, Violence Policy Center), 3.8.b
Rangell, Charles (U.S. Representative, D-NY), Appendix I.
Reay, Donald T. (chief medical examiner, King County, WA), 1.1
Reagan, Ronald (U.S. President), 3.2, Appendix I.
Reconstruction Era [U.S.], 2.3
Register, R. C. (judge, Grant Parish, LA), 2.3
Rehnquist, William (U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice), Appendix III.
Reloading, 3.0
Reno, Janet (Attorney General to President Clinton), Appendix VI.
Revere, Paul (silversmith, patriot), 4.0
Reynolds, Glenn H. (law professor, U. of Tennessee), 2.2
Rice, Alan (writer, board member JPFO), 3.0, 3.3
RKBA ["right to keep and bear arms," from the phrase in Amendment II
of the United States federal Constitution]
Rixham, Jr., John (Woodlawn, MD police officer), 3.4
Roberts, Sandra (journalist), 3.0.6
Rockefeller, Jay (U.S. Senator, D-WV), 3.3
Roper Center (polling organization, U.S.), 1.1.b
Rossi, Peter (author), 3.5
Rotem, Simha [a.k.a. Simcha Rathajzer, or "Kazik"] (ZOB fighter), 4.0
Russert, Tim (television journalist), 3.3
Safety rules, Appendix III.
Salvi, Al (U.S. Senate candidate, R-IL), Appendix VI.
Seldes, George (author, journalist), 2.1
select fire [capable of single shot, multi-shot burst, or full
automatic (machinegun) rate of fire]
semi-auto(matic) [fires one shot per pull of trigger, ejects case,
loads another round into chamber]
Senate, U.S.
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms (report), 2.1
Federal Firearms Legislation (1968 hearings), Appendix I.
Schindler, Oskar (German war profiteer and industrialist), 4.0
"Schindler's List" (motion picture), 4.0
Schulman, J. Neil (author, screenwriter), 1.0
Schumer, Charles (U.S. Rep., D-NY), 3.4.a
Schwartz, Bernard (law professor, New York University), 2.0
Schwizer, Peter (author, journalist), 4.0
Second Amendment -- see Law
Shalhope, Robert (historian, University of Oklahoma), 2.1
Shanley, Agnes (editor,_Chemical Engineering_), 3.0.c
Shaw, Daniel (sheriff, Grant Parish, LA), 2.3
SHU [Scoville Heat Units, a pharmacological measure of the "heat"
in hot peppers. Formerly conducted by a panel of human tasters,
the SHU scale has now been calibrated with instrumental methods,
and is measured via HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography).
Bell peppers are assigned a zero, jalapenos rate about 5,000 SHU,
and the hottest edible peppers, habaneros (_Capsicum chinense_),
about 200-300,000 SHU. By contrast, the pepper extracts used in
chemical defensive sprays have an effective dose of between
1,500,000 and 2,000,000 SHU.]
Simkin, Jay (research director, JPFO), 3.0, 3.3, Appendix I.
Singletary, Otis (), 2.3
Slavery [U.S.], 2.0, 2.3
small arms [handheld firearms such as rifles, pistols, and shotguns
as distinguished from crew-served artillery]
(Society of) Friends ["Quakers", pacifist Christian denomination], 2.1
Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Enginers (SPIE), 3.6.a
Solomon, Gerald (U.S. Representative, R-NY), 3.3
Solzhenitsyn, Alexsandr (author, Soviet political prisoner), 4.0
Soviet Union [CCCP, Soyuz Sovetskykh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublic]
constitution of -- see Law, Constitution, Soviet Union
genocide in, 4.0
Gulag, 2.1
occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989), 4.0
tyranny in, 2.1, 4.0
Spielberg, Steven (producer, director), 4.0
"sporting purposes," 2.1, Appendix I.
Sprays, chemical defense -- see Chemical defense sprays
Squirt gun
"Super Soaker," 3.6
Stalin, Josef (a.k.a. Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili,
Soviet dictator, mass murderer), 2.1
"Star Trek" (television series, U.S.), 1.1.a
"states' rights," 2.1, 2.2
Stevens, John Paul (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Appendix V.
Stinger anti-aircraft missile (U.S.), 4.0
Story, Joseph (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Appendix V.
Strong, Sanford (former San Diego police officer, author), 1.0
Stun "guns," 1.1.a, 3.8.a
Sugarmann, Josh (executive director, Violence Policy Center),
3.6, 3.8.b
Supreme Court [U.S.], 1.0, 2.0, 2.3, 3.3, Appendix V.
SWAT [Special Weapons and Tactics, or paramilitary police]
Switzerland
ProTell [gun owners association], Appendix III.
"Taggants," 3.0.c
TASER [Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle, a whimsical name given
to the police stun gun by its inventor. Taken from
the 'Tom Swift' children's book adventure series.]
Taser, Air -- see stun "guns"
Tear gas, 1.1.a
Telecommunications, 2.2
"telescoping," 1.1.b, 1.1.c
Thomas, Andrew (author), 3.3
Thomas, Clarence (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Appendix V.
Tillman, Alexander (), 2.3
Trail, Jeffrey (), 3.2
Trie, Yah Lin "Charlie" (restauranteur), 3.3
Trigger locks, 1.3
Treasury Department [U.S.]
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), 3.0, 3.0.a, 3.2.a,
3.4, 3.4.a, 3.5, Appendix I.
University of Maryland study, 3.0.b, 3.8, Appendix II, Appendix IV.
Urban, Mark (journalist, author), 4.0
van Alstyne, William (law professor, Duke University), 2.1
Van Atta, Dale (journalist), 3.6
Versace, Gianni (designer), 3.2
Waffengesetz - see Law, German Statutes (Third Reich)
Waffen-SS [Shutzstaffel, armed elite guard], (German Third Reich), 4.0
Waite, Morrison R. (U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice), Appendix V.
Walker, Bob (lobbyist for HCI), 3.4.a
Waller, Roger (Dayton, OH police officer, murderer), Appendix I.
Wang Jun (financier, arms dealer), 3.3
Wang Zhen (Communist Chinese general), 3.3
Ward, William (captain of Grant Parish, LA negro militia,
LA state legislator), 2.3
Warfare
guerilla, 4.0
telecommunications and, 4.0
Warmoth, Henry C. (governor of Louisiana), 2.3
Warsaw Ghetto uprising -- see Poland
Washington, D.C., 1.1.a, 3.0.b, Appendix IV.
Washington, George (U.S. President)
"liberty teeth" quote, Appendix VI.
Weapon substitution, 1.1.a, 3.5
Webster, Noah (lexicographer, patriot), 2.0
"well regulated" -- see Law, Amendment II
White League [racist organization, U.S.], Appendix V.
Wiersema, Brian (criminologist, University of Maryland), 3.0.b
Williams, Mike (journalist), Appendix VI.
Wintemute, Garen (physician, University of California, Davis), 1.1.b
Woods, William (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Appendix V.
Women, 1.2.a, 3.8.b
World Trade Center (NY) bombing, 3.0.c
World War II, 2.2, 4.0
Wright, James (sociologist, Tulane University), 3.5
Wu, Corinna, 3.0.c
Zelman, Aaron (executive director, JPFO), 3.0, 3.3, Appendix I.
Zimring, Franklin E. (criminologist, law professor, University
of California at Berkeley), 3.1
ZOB -- see Jewish Fighting Organization
--End of FAQ--

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